


Until their leaves fall off

by stereden



Category: Naruto
Genre: And a lot of other people as well, Angst, Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nawaki reincarnated as Naruto, Nawaki wants things to make sense again, Reincarnation, and his sensei, being reincarnated 30 years after your death is not funny, but that doesn't look likely unfortunately, especially when everyone you knew is dead or missing or worse, he is not impressed by this, he wants his sister back, though really this is me you should be expecting this by now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2020-11-22 22:31:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20881736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereden/pseuds/stereden
Summary: The first time Nawaki realizes something is wrong, he’s three years old and alone in the room in the attic of the orphanage.That’s not my room, he thinks.“Naruto, do you want to go to Ichiraku’s?” Hokage-jiji asks him when he visits him.That’s not my name, he thinks.Because he’s pretty sure his name is Senju Nawaki.It takes him a while to understand what happened.He died, he remembers one night, waking up screaming from a nightmare that shakes him to the bones because it’s not just a nightmare, it’s a memory, and he remembers running ahead of his team, seeing, too late, the wire as he trips it, and then fire, sound and pain, so much pain, and it hurts and it hurts so much and then…Nothing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Stormborn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1877970) by [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat). 

> "Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year." ~ Chad Sugg
> 
> This fic has been sleeping in my WIP folder for a bit over three years now, and I've recently started working on it again and figured it was time to post it.
> 
> This started off as a plotbunny I tried to sick on blackkat but ended up biting me instead xD
> 
> Usual warning apply: this is me writing, so expect some Angst, Feels, and possibly tears at some point. This story is mostly done, just some tweaking left to do, so I'm hoping to have it completed by December if everything goes well - though my priority at the moment are my One Piece fics and my original stuff, and nanowrimo is coming up, so we'll see how it goes xD
> 
> Let me know what you think!

The first time Nawaki realizes something is wrong, he’s three years old and alone in the room in the attic of the orphanage.

_That’s not my room,_ he thinks.

“Naruto, do you want to go to Ichiraku’s?” Hokage-jiji asks him when he visits him.

_That’s not my name_, he thinks.

Because he’s pretty sure his name is Senju Nawaki.

* * *

It takes him a while to understand what happened.

He died, he remembers one night, waking up screaming from a nightmare that shakes him to the bones because it’s not just a nightmare, it’s a memory, and he remembers running ahead of his team, seeing, too late, the wire as he trips it, and then fire, sound and pain, so much pain, and it hurts and it hurts so much and then…

Nothing.

Nothing until he wakes up in a tiny, crying body that can’t do anything but eat and cry and sleep and poop. But this body tires so easily that he can’t really think about what happened, so it’s only when he’s three or four that he realizes that he’s been reincarnated.

His name is Uzumaki Naruto, now, apparently. He’s an orphan, but the Hokage - Tsunade-nee’s sensei, Sarutobi-sama, he remembers him well - visits him a few times a week.

He doesn’t do that for other orphans, Nawaki notes. Just him. It intrigues him, but Hokage-jiji is the only one who actually spends time with him, who looks happy to see him when everyone in the village he so loves is giving him cold glares and veiled insults, and Nawaki doesn’t want to question the only good thing in his life so far.

Instead, he tries to spend as much time as possible with the old man, because surely Tsunade-nee would come and visit her old sensei at some point, right?

* * *

Except she doesn’t. And he never sees her in the village either. Actually, there are many people that should be in the village that he doesn’t see. Oro-sensei. His teammates. Hatake Sakumo-san. Little Shizune-chan, who had become his friend after he babysat her a few times during his first D-ranks. Jiraya, Tsunade-nee’s stupid teammate. Mito-baachan. Uzushio ninjas, who used to come by regularly. Anyone wearing the Senju clan symbol.

It’s starting to scare him. How long has it been, since he died? At school, they are told that the Sandaime is sixty years old. Nawaki’s pretty sure that the man had only been in his thirties when he stepped on that exploding tag. Thirty years. Thirty years, and another great shinobi war on top of the one that killed Nawaki.

That’s… that’s a long time, he swallows, after getting sent out of the class for ‘disrupting’ it.

(He actually fell from his chair when he did the math, and the sensei hated him anyway.)

Long enough that Mito-baachan, who had already been pretty old back then, could have died from old age. Long enough for another war, one that might have taken his sister and her team.

* * *

He drags his feet through the village and looks up to find that he’s standing in front of the Senju compound.

The abandoned Senju compound. It’s obvious that no one has lived there for quite a while, and part of it shows signs of outright destruction.

He runs away before the old lady down the street can do more than yell at him, and he doesn’t stop until he’s on top of the Hokage mountain, on top of his grandfather’s head.

He loves this village, or at least he used to, but he always loved the people inside it more than the bricks that built it. And right now, despite the village looking mostly the same as it did back then, Nawaki feels as if he’s in an entirely different world.

* * *

“Ne, Jiji, what happened to your students?” He asks the old man one day, when he can’t hold it in anymore.

_What happened to my sister?_ He doesn’t say. _What happened to my sensei?_

He doesn’t expect the Hokage to freeze, pale, and then turn towards him, face set in stone.

“Who told you about my students, Naruto-kun?” The man asks, trying for a gentle tone but mostly failing.

“I heard someone at school talk about the Dentetsu no Sannin” Nawaki answers, making an effort to articulate. Being four is hard on his vocabulary. “They said that you had trained them!”

Something relaxes in Sarutobi, if only slightly.

“I did have a genin team” He answers lightly. “But they’re not in the village at the moment. They travel a lot.”

And he doesn’t elaborate, and Nawaki doesn’t insists.

He's four, but he can still tell when someone is lying.

* * *

The next day, he uses a simple henge to enter the library and check the history books. Surely, if there’s been another war, the legendary three would have featured heavily in it, right?

Except they don’t. Or at least, not as the Legendary three. Tsunade-nee is not mentioned at all, Oro-sensei is only briefly mentioned, and Jiraya’s mostly referenced as the teacher of Namikaze Minato, the man who became the fourth Hokage.

What happened to them? What happened to the unbreakable team, the three persons wall that stood between the village and its enemies?

<strike> _ Where is his sister? Where is his sensei? Why is he alone? _ </strike>

* * *

He starts the Academy shortly after his visit to the library. It’s also at that point that he’s moved out of the orphanage and into his own small apartement.

The Academy is HELL. He has too much chakra this time around, too much energy, and he can’t stay still for more than a few minutes at a time. He knows most of the practical stuff already, and is easily bored by them. History is slightly interesting, but the teachers hate him and some of the things they say make no sense.

“But what about Uzushio?” he dares to ask when they learn about the other hidden countries.

What about Konoha’s closest ally? What about his grandmother’s home? What about the city of white and reds and golds and blue, so beautiful in the sunset?

“Uzushio doesn’t exist!” the teacher snaps, and sends him out for disturbing the class.

* * *

The library is hit again, and Nawaki finds out that the village hidden in the whirlpool was destroyed entirely by the unholy alliance of Kiri, Iwa, Kumo and Ame, shortly before the beginning of the third great war.

Konoha had been too late to support them, and could only avenge their fall.

And then they forgot. They forgot about Uzushio, about the whirlpools, about the people who lived and breathed seals as others did air. They forgot about his grandmother’s people, about his grandmother’s home, and Nawaki wants to rage and rant and cry because Uzushio is gone. Most of her people died with her, the book tells him, and the few survivors scattered.

Only a bare handful came to Konoha, and that in itself is telling.

_Where was Konoha?_ Nawaki wonders, like the survivors wondered after their village fell._ Where was Konoha when her sister village was being assaulted? _

* * *

Nawaki misses the rest of the classes that day. Instead, he heads back to his lonely little flat, takes out the red paint he had bought for a prank, and looks at the white walls of his room. 

By the time night falls, the crimson spiral of Uzushio adorns his wall, surrounded by some of the seals he had learned at his grandmother’s knees. They are hidden by the swirls of the whirlpools he drew, in the deepest blue he could find, the one he remembers his grandmother wearing for his parents funerals.

The dark blue of the sea where it is at its deepest, Mito-baachan had told him. It is the colour of mourning, of grief so deep that no one could see its bottom. A grief so all-encompassing that none could escape it, least of all the ones who caused it.

* * *

(Mito-baachan had _slaughtered_ the assassins who had killed her son and daughter in-law before they could reach her grandchildren, Nawaki remembers. )

(He remembers waking up to the brief flash of killing intent, all of four years old, to find his sister awake and pale, a kunai in one hand and the other extended in front of him, standing between him and the door. He remembers the oppressing feeling of dark and heavy chakra, the roar of grief that wouldn’t have been out of place coming from a wounded animal, and the void where five lives had been previously. He remembers shaking when he couldn’t feel his mother’s warm chakra, his father’s steadfast presence. He remembers his grandmother reaching their room, covered in blood not her own, her face set in stone and her eyes full of grief even as ANBU’s raced for their house.)

(He remembers his parents, slaughtered in their sleep by Kumo-nins who had managed to infiltrate the village and bypass the Senju wards by putting one of his cousins under a genjutsu.)

(He remembers his great-uncle’s fury, and his grandmother’s quiet rage, and he remembers that this is what made Tsunade-nee chose healing as her path)

* * *

“I painted whirlpools because that’s what my name means!” he beams at the Hokage when the old man asks him why he decided to indulge into some wall art, and the man smiles benignly and misses the presence of the seals he painted to protect his belongings from the random mobs that sometimes came after him during the fall festival.

When history class focuses on the second Shinobi war, the teacher starts talking about the legendary three. He dedicates one class to each of them.

And Nawaki’s world is upended again, because there is no way that the teacher is telling the truth. It just can’t be.

Tsunade-nee left the village immediately after the end of the second war? _Why_? The teacher says she’s studying medicinal techniques from other nations, but when Nawaki ends up in front of the memorial stone that night, to honor those who fell in that war along with him, he sees the name Kato Dan, a few dozen rows underneath his own. 

He must have died only a few months after me, Nawaki thinks, and he remembers a white-haired young man who looked at Tsunade from afar until Shizune and him got fed up with the so-called grown-ups just staring at each other and introduced the two of them. Which they had promptly regretted, because if Tsunade-nee had been bad when she was crushing on Dan, it was even worse after they finally got together, and the teasing had been horrible once the new couple had decided that their sibling/niece would make a cute couple as well. Ew. Just, ew. Nawaki had been twelve! And Shizune-chan had only been five at the time, and she still thought boys had cooties (though Nawaki was apparently immune).

But losing Dan? After losing Nawaki? He knows he’s not exaggerating when he says that he and his sister had always been particularly close. Losing Tsunade would have been like losing his entire world, back then.

<strike> (It kind of feels this way now) </strike>

Losing Dan so soon after losing him? Yes, he can understand Tsunade-nee wanting to leave after that. He hates it, but he can understand it.

Shizune’s name is not on the stone, and the teacher mentions that Tsunade-nee left with an apprentice, so at least neither of them is alone.

He cries, that night, because he misses his big sister, and everything in this new life is weird and confusing and wrong, and Tsunade-nee is the only one who could fix this. She would recognize him, Nawaki is sure. She would recognize him and everything would be alright again.

* * *

Except, as he finds out during his next history class, that nothing will ever be alright again.

He stares at the blackboard in disbelief, can’t understand what the teacher is saying about Oro-sensei.

Missing-nin.

Traitor.

Murderer.

Mad scientist.

Butcher of children.

That can’t be true, Nawaki thinks, face ashen, as the teacher explains in clinical terms that Orochimaru of the Dentetsu no Sannin had experimented illegally on fellow Konoha citizens, ninjas and civilians alike, before being found out by the Sandaime and fleeing the village.

That can’t be true, Nawaki thinks. That can’t be. Not Oro-sensei, not the man who had taken him and his teammates under his coils, not the man who had taught him more about being a ninja than three years in the fast track, wartime program of the Academy had. Not the man who used to have tea with Mito-baachan twice a month, to discuss seals and philosophy. Not the man who had held him close after his first close brush with death, not the man who had patiently talked him through a panic attack after his first kill. Not the man who had healed Natsu after the Gekko had nearly been bisected by an enemy with greater range. Not the man who had promised to let him sign the snake summoning contract once he became chunin. Not the man who had worked himself sick to create an antidote when Nanao-chan had been poisoned by a Kusa nin. Not the man whose devastated expression is Nawaki’s last clear memory before his death.

He ends up being thrown out of that class too, because he’s gone into shock and doesn’t listen to a word the teacher says. That doesn’t matter, he tells himself. That man is a liar anyway, there is no way that bullshit really happened.

Right?

He slips into the library once again, and heads for the shelf with the old bingo books.

Oro-sensei’s face stares right back at him, next to the S-class threat ranking and the flee-on sight recommendation for anyone not an ANBU.

Wanted for crimes against the village, included but not limited to treason, murder and kidnapping.

_How did this happen?_ Nawaki wants to scream. _Why did this happen?_

He breaks into the ninja archives next, hunts down his own file and those of his genin teammates. What he finds is disquieting, and he has to bite his lip to prevent himself from sobbing.

Natsu is dead, died shortly after the end of the second war, taken by the lung disease that tends to show up in his family. He had only been sixteen. Nanao-chan is dead too, after using Kawarimi to take a hit meant for their sensei less than three weeks after Nawaki’s own death.

<strike>Dead. They were dead, all of them, and Oro-sensei had been left alone and now Nawaki was alone alone alone</strike>

* * *

He goes home that night and sets up a small praying altar in a corner of his room. He puts one of his training kunai for Natsu, who had once taken one in the arm for him, and he puts a book for Nanao-chan who had loved fairy tales, and a piece of candy for Dan who used to give sweets to children in the streets.

When the Sandaime questions him about the altar, Nawaki tells him it’s for all the people who died during the great wars that the teacher talked about in class recently, and the man nods and buys him some nice incense sticks.

The next class, their history teacher talks about the Toad Sage Jiraya, the Seal Master who taught the fourth Hokage, and who is on a long-term mission for the Hokage, but Nawaki can’t bring himself to care about the fact that at least one of the three hasn’t totally abandoned the village. Jiraya had never been his favourite person, though he hadn’t exactly disliked the man either. The white haired shinobi had just been… too loud. And too prompt to come and annoy Oro-sensei, and if there was one thing that team Orochimaru had always been, it’s prompt to defend their teacher. Jiraya also had the bad habit of spying on the kunoichi baths, and Nawaki had quite often helped his sister and female teammate in maiming the pervert when they caught him.

Why? Why is _Jiraya_ the only one who stayed, for a given definition of the world? What had happened, why him and not the others?

* * *

He can’t quite bring himself to care about the Academy after that. He gives a token effort, but most of the teachers hate him anyway, and he gets bored too quickly, and he plays pranks that are actually closer to traps, but no one notices that because he failed that unit. He fails the one on sealing too, because his flashbang seal is different from the one they were supposed to create, because it’s an Uzushio special that his grandmother taught him, and the teacher doesn’t recognize it and makes fun of him in front of the entire class because he’s not even able to copy a simple seal.

He barely passes the taijutsu classes, because he keeps losing points for not using the Academy style even though his style works. He looks like a drunkard brawling in a bar, the sensei yells at him, and doesn’t recognize the katas of the Uzumaki style that had been the predominant style in Uzushiogakure, nor does he catch the few Senju moves that make it into the mix.

Konoha might have forgotten the village hidden in whirlpools, but Nawaki never will.

(Tsunade had been the one to take the most after their grandfather, a Senju to the bones even if she had never been able to use the mokuton. Doton answered her call without thinking, as effortlessly as breathing, and for all that she had never wanted to wear the Hokage’s hat, she had put herself between danger and the village, an immovable wall to protect their people.)

(Nawaki had always been closer to the grandmother who had raised him after the death of their parents, more of an Uzumaki than a Senju for all that he was born and raised in Konoha. Water came easier for him than earth, and he had fallen in love with the cliffs and twists of Uzushio, with the whirlpools surrounding the island, and while he had dreamed of being Hokage one day, it had always been with Uzushio at Konoha’s side, with his cousin Arashi as Uzushio’s Kage, the two of them taking the world by the storm.)

(But Arashi is dead now, dead and gone along with Uzushio, though Nawaki was proud to find out that he had indeed ended up as the Uzukage, and that he had been the one to rally his village for one last charge against their enemies, causing the deaths of thousands of enemy shinobi even as the village disappeared into the sea that had surrounded it for so long.)

(Nawaki longs for Uzushio in a way that surprises even him, for he hadn’t visited the village more than half a dozen times. Maybe it’s because he carries the Uzumaki name this time around, or maybe it’s because Konoha has tried to bury their shame and forget about them, and if there’s one thing Nawaki can’t accept, it’s willingly forgetting someone or something that was once precious to you.)

(Konoha doesn’t seem to like him anyway, part of him whispers. And Uzushio has fallen, but maybe, maybe, maybe one day the survivors will come back, and rebuild, and maybe Nawaki as Naruto will be welcome there. He’s even more of an Uzumaki than he used to be, for all that his hair is confusingly blond.)

(Blonder even than Tsunade-nee’s, and it annoys him, because if he is going to be an Uzumaki this time around, he damn well wants to look like one.)

(Mito-baachan’s crimson locks had always held a certain fascination in Nawaki’s eyes.)

(The henge he uses when he sneaks around is that of a redhaired Uzumaki kid he met once or twice when Mito-baachan took him with her to Uzushio to visit her family, and Nawaki feels better with red hair than blonde. He still doesn’t feel like Nawaki, not totally, and he carefully avoids giving himself brown hair, because he knows he’s not quite Nawaki anymore, for all that this is still the name he uses when thinking of himself. But he doesn’t quite feel like Naruto either, and he focuses on the fact that they both have Uzumaki blood running through their veins in order to avoid losing his mind.)

* * *

He fails the first graduation exam because of the bunshin. It’s not even his fault, he has too much chakra for the stupid thing, but he fails anyway, and as he heads back to his flat, one of the old ladies that sells fruit outside the academy spits at him and calls him demon.

Oh.

Oh. OH. 

The history teacher had talked about the Kyuubi attack, the one that happened about ten years ago. About the fourth hokage, who had killed the beast. He hadn’t thought about it much (mostly because history class is full of bullshit, seriously, he’s pretty sure that at least half of it is made up, and even if it isn’t he’s still not going to believe a word coming from the man who spits Oro-sensei’s name and calls him a traitor), but now he remembers and he feels stupid.

Because nothing can kill a bijuu, not even his lauded grandfather had managed that. They can only been sealed away in recipients or in people, and the Nine-tails had always been too powerful to be contained by a simple object.

* * *

He remembers the dark red chakra that had surrounded his grandmother when she had killed the ones who took his parents, remembers brushing her hair as she told him, in a quiet and faraway voice, of Hashirama’s fight against the beast and of sealing it in her own body to protect her husband and the village he had founded.

“He is full of hate and anger” Mito-baachan had told him. “And he is furious of having been sealed away in a puny human.”

“Is it hard?”Nawaki had asked, not quite seven years old. “Keeping him from attacking others?”

“It is” Mito had nodded, looking decades older than her age. “But it is my burden to bear, and everyday that I hold him back is a day he can’t attack the people I love. And that makes it worth it.”

She had shown him the seal, incredibly complex and minutiously drawn.

She had come up with it on the spot, while fighting the beast at her husband’s side.

Nawaki had looked at her in awe, back then, as much for her sealing prowess as for her strength in holding back the bijuu.

* * *

The bijuu that is now sealed inside him. Nawaki has the closest thing to a nervous breakdown he’s had since finding out what had happened to his teammates and sensei. Because he has a nine-tailed demon sealed inside his body that he didn’t know about, and he’s only ten and apparently the thing has been in him for as long as he’s been alive and he’s never so much as felt it. He manages to make it visible, and spends hours analyzing it carefully. It’s not the same seal as Mito-baachan’s, and he can’t identify all the components, because he died before he could learn all there was to learn about his Uzumaki heritage, but what he sees indicates a stronger separation of minds than the original.

He takes a very cold shower to shock himself out of his stupor and decides not to think too much about it for now. If he has never felt the bijuu before now, then odds are the seal is doing its job.

And if Mito-baachan could do it for decades, Nawaki owes it to her to try.

(Especially since he went and died on her, even though he had promised her she would never have to bury a member of her family again shortly after the death of Senju Tobirama.)

* * *

He fails the exam a second time, because they asked him to do the bunshin AGAIN and he still can’t do it, despite practicing all the chakra control exercises he can remember daily. He had thought his reserves had been so big because of his Uzumaki heritage, but finding out about the literal chakra monster inside his stomach had explained a lot. 

He needs to get his hands on the instructions for another type of clone, possibly a water clone, to keep with his goal of perpetuating Uzushio’s legacy, but he’s not even a genin yet and he can’t access the jutsu library, even with a henge, much to his dismay.

He’s in a new class now, full of clan heirs and so called geniuses or both. The Nara boy is alright, though very very lazy, but good company nonetheless, as is the Akimichi who reminds Nawaki of Torifu-san who had been Mito-baachan’s student. The Aburame keeps to himself, and the Inuzuka is loud and brash and a perfect partner in crime. The Uchiha is aloof and arrogant, and Nawaki wants to punch him in the face on principle alone at first (because even if he’s an Uzumaki now, Nawaki will always think himself a Senju first, and Sasuke is just like the worst of the Uchiha he had had to deal with back then, when he could have been so much better, more like Hikaku-san and Kagami-oji, but no he insists on being a dick instead) and then because of his holier than thou attitude.

(He knows what happened to the boy’s clan, knows that his brother snapped and slaughtered everyone, and Nawaki hates the part of him that’s surprised it took so long for one of that clan to snap, because a lot of good people died too, women and children and elderlies, and Kagami-oji who used to tell him bedtime stories by using genjutsu to make the story play out around the room was killed by their lauded prodigy too and Nawaki will never forgive Uchiha Itachi for that, for taking Kagami-oji away before he had found the courage to try and talk to the man, to see if Kagami-oji would recognize him, and now he’ll never know and it hurts.)

The Hyuuga heiress is cripplingly shy, and Nawaki tries to help her when he can, because she kinds of reminds him of Nanao-chan before she landed on their team. The Yamanaka on the other hand is loud and confident, and Nawaki learns early on to stay away from her because she is vicious, both with words and in a fight. Sakura-chan is civilian-born, with pink hair and green eyes, and she reminds him of Tsunade-nee in the way she doesn’t hesitate to punch someone through the ground if they annoy her.

(He’s so desperate for anything that reminds him of his sister than he often annoys her for the sole purpose of getting punched through a wall, because for a small moment he can believe that it’s Tsunade-nee plowing him through a training ground after he spilled his sealing ink all over her books.)

They are nice enough, for the most part, but Nawaki doesn’t get them, not really, because they were lucky enough to be born in a time of peace, lucky enough to never have known war, and all he can remember is that when he was their age, he was already running through battlefields and losing academy friends to enemy jutsus. He gets along with most of them, but he keeps them at arm's length. He still doesn’t know if it’s because they are just kids and he doesn’t know how to be one anymore, or if it’s because he just doesn’t want to get attached to them only to lose them to their first mission.

(One of the reasons there is now a minimum amount of D-Rank missions a genin team needs to take before starting on C-ranks which take them out of the village is to give the sensei at least some time to get their students up to scratch before being confronted by the harsh reality of the shinobi life.)

(Nawaki had been one of the lucky ones. Oro-sensei’s position as one of Konoha’s best scientist had meant that his team had spent their first three months in the village, training and helping in the labs.)

(By the time Oro-sensei had been forced to take them out in the field, half of Nawaki’s academy class had already died.)

Iruka-sensei is nicer than most, and buys ramen for him sometimes. Mizuki-sensei is nice too, but there’s something about him that unsettles Nawaki, and he avoids the man when he can. 

* * *

He fails a third time, and he’s _angry_, because they asked him about the Bunshin _again_, not the Kawarimi that he can do in his sleep, not the Henge that he uses daily just to be able to shop for his groceries without being harassed. They always ask for the one jutsu they know he can’t do, despite having refined his chakra control to the point that he’s able to walk on water while rotating five leaves on his hands and face, and he’s starting to believe that they will never let him become a ninja at this rate.

But being a ninja is all he’s ever known, all he’s ever been, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if they wouldn’t let him.

So when Mizuki approaches him with a secret graduation exam, Nawaki throws caution to the wind and accepts. Oh, he knows the man is probably a traitor, knows that he’s using him, but at this point Nawaki is so fed up with Konoha as a whole that he sees this as an opportunity to maybe get his hands on some jutsu that could help him pass the damn test, maybe the Kage Bunshin or the Explosive clone, and he can always sound the alert about Mizuki as he does so. And if they try to punish him, well, it’s not like there’s anything holding him back in Konoha. He could and would leave it in a heartbeat if there was a glimmer of a chance to find his sister.

He could probably manage it, too. He knows they wouldn’t let him leave just like that, not when he holds the Kyuubi, but he’s always been good at planning escapes, and he has at least five dozens possible escapes routes he could use.

Add to that the Kage Bunshin, once he learnt it, and good luck to any ninja sent out to find him.

* * *

It doesn’t come to that, in the end. He distracts the Hokage with a jutsu Tsunade-nee would have killed them both for, before maiming Jiraya for giving Nawaki the idea in the first place, and makes his way to the meeting point Mizuki had mentioned. The first jutsu in the scroll, luckily for him, is the Kage Bunshin, but Nawaki makes sure to copy a few others before starting on that one.

It takes him about three dozen tries, but he finally gets it, and five perfect clones are standing next to him.

Well, they would be perfect if they actually reflected his current appearance and not his old one, and he yelps before dispelling them. The next batch comes out perfectly, just in time for Iruka-sensei to arrive and yell at him.

The rest of the evening is kind of a blur, with Mizuki attacking Iruka, trying to get Nawaki to abandon Konoha by ‘revealing’ the truth about the Kyuubi to him.

The man probably didn’t expect Nawaki to snort and tell him to learn the difference between a sealing scroll and a kunai. 

They play the weirdest game of cat and mouse, Nawaki running with the scroll, Mizuki trying to catch him and Iruka trying to stop Mizuki. At least until Iruka manages to fool Mizuki with a henge, and loudly acknowledges Naruto Uzumaki as his student and fellow Konoha citizen rather than a demon. The oversized shuriken that was about to impale the teacher hits a tree instead when Nawaki uses Kawarimi on it.

“Don’t touch my sensei” the boy states, voice ice cold.

Mizuki doesn’t listen, and charges at them.

A hundred Kage Bunshin descend on him in fury, and the fast movements of the Uzushio taijutsu Nawaki favours make quick work of the traitor.

* * *

Iruka-sensei gives him his headband after that, proclaims him a genin in his own right, and Nawaki starts to think that maybe, maybe Konoha isn’t so bad after all.

(It’s still wrong on so many points, but… there are a few bright notes in the cacophony).

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nawaki finds himself sitting at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean that night, looking at the water in the direction where Uzushio used to be. There was a time, he remembers, when, if the weather was good, you could nearly see the village hidden in the whirlpools from here. According to the history books in the library, there’s nothing left of it now, the magnificent city having crumbled into the water when her last defenders died, taking with her thousands of enemies who had been too close to the sinkhole.  
Only the whirlpools remain, now, and Nawaki wishes he could see them.  
There’s a rustle on his left as Kakashi sits down.  
“She was beautiful, you know?” Nawaki whispers, breaking the silence. “Uzushio. She was built on nine levels, surrounded by twenty-seven whirlpools. Her founders raised her from the sea bed, and she was made of white seastone and dark blue roofs, and when the sun set they say that the whole city would turn red and gold. There was a picture, in the history book.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for all your kind comments!
> 
> As promised, here comes the second chapter! On the menu this time: getting a genin team is more trouble than it's worth, and the mission to Wave!
> 
> Nawaki is very much not impressed by his genin team, even less by his sensei (he would like Sakumo-san back, thank you very much), and is also very much not okay at all with Kiri nins (even missing nins) fucking shit up on Uzushio territory.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: UZUSHIO  
The version of Uzushio's fall, and a lot of my inspiration for Uzushio in general, referenced in this story is heavily influenced by blackkat's fic 'Stormborn', which is amazing and which I highly recommend! The reference to the Uzukage, Arashi Uzumaki and his reputation as the Storm God especially comes from 'Stormborn'  
That fic has shaped my vision of Uzushio, so much that I sometimes forget it's not actually canon. It was absolutely not my intention to steal that headcanon from kat and I apologize for not putting this note in the fic before posting it.
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy it!
> 
> Warning for: angst, feels, mention of genocide (Uzushio's fall), mention of deaths, canon-typical violence

“I’m sorry for not telling you before” Sarutobi apologizes. “I wanted you to have a normal childhood.”

Nawaki refrains from snorting, because really? Even if he wasn’t the reincarnation of Senju Nawaki, his childhood had been far from normal.

“Were there others?” He asks instead. “Other people who held the Kyuubi?”

“Two.” Sarutobi answers, voice sad and quiet. “Both of them were Uzumaki women. The first was my sensei’s wife, Uzumaki-Senju Mito-sama. The second was your mother, Naruto-kun. Uzumaki Kushina.”

Nawaki freezes at that.

He had wondered, of course, who his parents had been, in this life. After finding out that he was the jinchuuriki, he had even wondered if they had abandoned him. 

Uzumaki Kushina. She had been a Jounin of Konoha, Sarutobi tells him, had moved here shortly before the fall of Uzushio to assist Mito-sama and take over her burden.

His mother had been the Uzumaki, Nawaki realizes, not his father as he had originally believed, and when he looks at the pictures of the previous Kage above the Sandaime’s desk, he wants to laugh hysterically.

Turns out, he’s actually related to three out of four Hokage.

How the hell is this his (second) life?

* * *

He doesn’t let the Sandaime know he guessed the identity of his father, not when the man tells him he can’t tell him because of his father's enemies.

Well, the man had basically slaughtered over a thousand Iwa nins in one go, no wonder they were pissed.

The man had also decided to sacrifice himself to seal a fucking bijuu in his newborn son after the seal on Kushina failed, so Nawaki is not quite sure how he feels about the man at the moment.

Especially since he still cherishes the few memories he has of his first parents.

He pushes the thought of parents, old and new, out of his head and focuses on meeting his future team.

* * *

The Uchiha. He’s going to be on the same team as the biggest emo Konoha has had since Madara Uchiha was in charge of the clan. Someone, somewhere, must be laughing their ass off at the mess that is Nawaki life, seriously. The kunoichi is Sakura-chan, which he is quietly happy about even though it’s obvious that she doesn’t share the sentiment.

But, Iruka-sensei also says that their sensei is going to be Hatake Kakashi. Hatake, as in Hatake Sakumo-san, who had been one of Oro-sensei’s closest friends and had often joined them in training sessions, so Nawaki keeps his hopes up. 

(Nawaki has no problem admitting that he had been something of a fanboy when it came to the White Fang of Konoha. In his defence, his entire team had been quietly enamoured with the man, even (or, should he say, especially) their sensei.)

Nawaki has seen the man’s grave, much to his dismay, when he went to put some incense on Natsu’s and Nanao-chan’s graves. It had been small and unassuming, nearly hidden away, and he had wondered why one of Konoha’s heroes had been relegated to the side after his death. He hadn’t looked into it then, because at that point he wasn’t sure how much more bad news he could take, and was now regretting it. Odds are, his new sensei is directly related to the man, as the Hatake clan had been down to one person in Nawaki’s first life.

* * *

Well, Nawaki thinks as he looks at the clock in dismay, Kakashi-san certainly didn’t inherit Sakumo-san’s punctuality. He puts a chalk-eraser above the door and uses the chalk dust on top of it to draw a small seal that will cause a small chalk-explosion when it impacts something.

It hits his new teacher straight on, and Nawaki groans. The man didn’t even try to evade it, for all that Nawaki is sure the man noticed it. He had been hoping to get some insight in the man’s style, too, and it annoys him that it didn’t work.

* * *

“My name is Uzumaki Naruto!” Nawaki introduces himself brightly. “ I like ramen, and Iruka-sensei, and I dislike traitors and the time it takes for ramen to cook! I’m gonna be Hokage one day dattebayo!”

(My name is Senju Nawaki. I like my family, especially Tsunade-nee. I like training with Oro-sensei and Natsu and Nanao-chan, and I hate the fact that nothing makes sense anymore. My dream is to find my sister again and finally understand what the fuck happened since I died.)

The other two introduce themselves in a painfully predictable manner, and Nawaki holds back a sigh. 

This is going to suck, he thinks as Kakashi-sensei explains that they will have a second test the next day.

* * *

He eats his breakfast. Log knows Tsunade-nee told him enough time that it was the most important meal of the day and that she would hurt him if he deliberately skipped it. He even packs some ration bars with him, because odds are he will need them if their new sensei decides to test their combat abilities. Even if Nawaki himself doesn’t end up needing them, he has a feeling the other two will have done as suggested and skipped breakfast. If he doesn’t want two half-famished ninjas, he might as well be ready to feed them.

Log knows that’s probably the only way to get them to cooperate with him when they’ve both made it pretty clear where he stands in this team.

(Log, how he misses Natsu and Nanao-chan. Sure, their team hadn’t started perfectly, but they had quickly found that they meshed together really well. Like a house on fire, in fact, or a training ground on fire, more precisely.)

(It had been an accident, during their own second genin test, and they had never been allowed to practice elemental jutsus without supervision again.)

* * *

Nawaki looks at Kakashi-sensei, right eye twitching.

The bell test.

The frigging bell test.

The test Tsunade-nee had told him about. The test Oro-sensei had told them about, but not subjected them to, preferring to test their ability to work together on a mock-mission (which had turned into a real mission when they had encountered actual enemy shinobis trying to infiltrate the village, and had resulted in an inferno that had taken down training ground 8).

Teamwork had always been at the center of the second genin test, Nawaki knows. It’s just his luck that this is the most mindfucking version Konoha uses, and that he’s on a team with two idiots who are definitely going to fall for Kakashi-sensei’s mind-trick.

The man is going to be pranked to kingdom come for this, Nawaki promises himself.

When he takes out a little orange book, the reborn Senju gives up.

“Icha Icha? Seriously?” He groans, putting his head in his hands.

“Maa maa, Naruto-kun, it’s great literature!” Kakashi says (no way Nawaki is going to call the man sensei with this display.)

“It’s porn!” The boy points out viciously. “And bad porn at that, from what I’ve heard.”

“You’re too young to understand” the gray haired man shakes his head sadly.

Sending a mental apology to Sakumo-san, Nawaki twists his fingers and sends a water bullet straight at the book, managing to soak it through before the older man can react.

“It’s trash.” He says, glaring at the offending object.

Unsurprisingly, the attack of his porn gets more reaction out of the jounin than Sasuke’s fireball at his head earlier.

How is that guy related to Sakumo-san? Nawaki despairs. Because for all that Kakashi outwardly looks like Oro-sensei’s friend (save for the mask), he’s nothing like Nawaki’s hero.

It’s just another knife in the gut, and Nawaki is getting so fucking tired of this.

He evades Kakashi’s fist, jumps above a sweeping leg, and slams a flash tag on the ground when the jounin makes a grab for him.

He uses the distraction to retreat to the trees, leaving his clones behind to buy him some time, and goes after his so-called teammate. He might as well _try_ to get them to work together…

* * *

Surprisingly, they actually do manage to work together. After Kakashi put them all through hell, of course, and only by needling the other two into doing what Nawaki wants them to do without them realising it, but they actually pass the bell test.

Ironically, and annoyingly, despite having been the one to initiate the teamwork, Nawaki was still the one who got tied to the training post anyway. He suspects it’s because of his wanton destruction of Kakashi’s book more than anything else, though.

It’s still annoying as hell.

Sasuke and Sakura-chan are quick to leave after the lecture on the importance of teamwork, and on how those who break the rules are trash, but those that abandon their teammates are worse than trash, which they apparently didn't learn anything from since they _left him tied up_, but Kakashi remains until Nawaki manages to untie himself.

“I didn’t know kids learned water jutsus in the Academy these days” the man drawls.

“I didn’t know senseis were allowed to read porn around underage students either.” Nawaki scowls back.

“Old enough to kill, old enough to know about the more interesting things in life” Kakashi smiles.

It’s creepy, when he does that. His smile looks like Sakumo’s, for all that Nawaki can’t see half his face, but the effect is very, very different. “Who taught you the water bullet?”

“I snuck into the jutsu library as soon as I got my headband” Nawaki deadpans. “Given that I had to fight one teacher to get the damn thing, I figured I better learn some new techniques before meeting my new sensei, just in case.”

He curls the rope up and drops it on top of one of the training posts.

“Ne, Kakashi-san?” He asks, not looking at the man but at the stone instead. “Are you related to Hatake Sakumo, the White Fang of Konoha?”

He can physically feel his new sensei freeze on the spot.

“He was my father” Kakashi answers eventually. “Why do you ask?”

“I saw his name in an old bingo book from Suna that’s in the library, when I checked how much the Old man’s head had been worth during the great wars.” Nawaki tells him, and it’s not entirely a lie. “He seemed pretty awesome.”

“He was.” Kakashi answers shortly, and Nawaki doesn’t pry.

* * *

He forces himself to go to the library and checks out the old newspaper around the death date of Sakumo-san.

He hates himself for it once he finds out what happened to the man, but if there is one thing that Oro-sensei had drilled into their head, it is that knowledge is power, and that only a moron will neglect to gather all the facts before acting. The library had never given him good news when it came to people from his old life, what had he expected?

Not that.

Not a suicide, that’s for sure. Sakumo-san had always been a bigger-than-life figure to Nawaki and his teammates, strong and invincible, like their own sensei. Seeing the two of them fighting together had been breathtaking, Nawaki remembers.

Sakumo-san saved their lives, once. It had been open battle, and they had gotten separated from Oro-sensei, and cornered by Kumo nins (Nawaki hates Kumo nins with the passion of a thousand fire jutsus coupled with wind jutsus), and Sakumo-san had rushed to their help and slaughtered the enemy platoon. He had gotten hurt doing so, too, but he hadn’t cared about anything other than their safety.

The newspapers talk about his failed mission, how it led to the start of the third war, and Nawaki wants to snarl because he just came out of a test that stresses the importance of teamwork and they had made Sakumo-san into a pariah for choosing his team over his mission? What kind of Konoha is that?

He thinks of Oro-sensei, losing Sakumo-san after losing Nawaki and Nanao-chan and Tsunade-nee leaving the village and Natsu deteriorating, and then he stops thinking about it because it hurts.

He adds a small wolf’s fang that he found in a thrift store to his altar. It’s getting crowded now, the kunai for Natsu, the book for Nanao-chan, the bag of candies for Dan, the fang for Sakumo-san. The spirals on his walls a tribute to his grandmother and her people. How many more mementos is he going to have to add? How much more of this can he take?

* * *

He doesn’t mention Sakumo-san again. He throws himself into his training instead, most of it on his own since for all that Kakashi is apparently a genius, the man can’t teach for shit, and he haunts the jutsu library for more suitons and seals.

When asked, he tells the Hokage that he wants to master water because he’s named for the whirlpools, and he intends on being just as dangerous as one, and that he wants to learn sealing to make sure his burden doesn’t escape.

He’ll never have the fine control necessary for medical ninjutsu, but he learns all he can about first aid instead (because he can still hear Tsunade-nee’s lectures, and because he found the records of her multiple requests to have at least one medic-trained shinobi on each team, to avoid tragedies like his own), and he brushes up on his trap detection.

<strike> (He’s not going to get himself blown up again, not this time.) </strike>

He abandons his bright orange jumpsuits the day after their teamwork test. Instead, he wears the greys and deep blues of Uzushio’s grief, the only bright touch the crimson spiral on his back and shoulders.

He’s quieter, too, and when Hokage-jiji asks him about it in a concerned tone, he simply tells him that he’s decided to take this seriously because Mizuki had been a wake-up call.

He never tells anyone the truth. He never tells the Sandaime that he can remember a life where he’s not Uzumaki Naruto, but Senju Nawaki, that he remembers fighting in a war and dying, and that everything he knows has been turned upside down since he realized he had been reborn.

He thinks about it, sometimes, but every time his instincts hold him back. And given that the last time he didn’t listen to them, still high on the fact that Tsunade-nee had given him their grandfather’s necklace, he had gotten himself killed, he’s determined to listen to them this time.

His newfound seriousness confuses his teammates, though the Uchiha doesn’t exactly show it. He asks for more spars, though, which means that he’s noticed that Nawaki has been upping his training. Sakura-chan seems simultaneously confused and angry, because it becomes apparent that despite her position as the first kunoichi in the class, she’s miles behind Nawaki when it comes to actual combat.

She doesn’t take this realisation well, and Nawaki is abruptly reminded once again that while he may have imprinted on the girl because she reminded him of his sister, she’s nothing like Tsunade-nee.

He stops letting her hit him after that.

* * *

D-Ranks are a pain in the ass, mostly because most of their clients are under the impression that he is a demon and not to be trusted.

The less said about that demon-cat Tora, the better.

Asking for a C-rank is not him throwing a tantrum, despite it being treated that way by Iruka-sensei who’s manning the mission desk. It’s self-preservation, because Nawaki is this close to going crazy doing stupid missions with teammates who don’t give a damn about him in a village that would rather he had died with his burden thirteen years ago, to the point that he finds himself thinking fondly of some of the most FUBAR missions of his previous life.

If war-time missions start to look attractive, it’s time to do something.

* * *

He hadn’t quite expected this, though. An escort mission to Wave Country. He knows the way, Wave being the closest country to Uzushio. Their client, Tazuna, is an old drunk that reeks of sake and nervousness, and Nawaki suspects that this is not going to be a simple escort mission.

He’s itching for some actual combat, though, and it might be a much needed wake-up call for Sakura and Sasuke, so he doesn’t say anything.

The puddle in the middle of the road when it hasn’t rained in days is just insulting, though. Kakashi twitches imperceptibly, and Nawaki decides to let him deal with the ambushers.

Of course, the man then decides to traumatize his genin team by letting them believe that he’d been torn apart by the two chunin-level attackers.

Seriously, how the hell is this guy Sakumo-san’s son? Nawaki twitches as he jumps over the clawed hand aimed at his face - probably poisoned, he notes, seeing the greenish shine - and slams an explosive tag on the man’s back. The small explosion is enough to slam the ninja to the ground with enough force to knock him out, and in that time Sasuke manages to take care of the other one.

Sakura, predictably, freezes up completely, though at least she doesn’t faint or run away. Nawaki sighs, kicks Kakashi’s shin for that stupid stunt, and turns to Tazuna for an explanation.

* * *

Why is it that every time Nawaki learns something new about the world he currently lives in, he finds himself wanting to kill someone? There’s a tyrant taking over Wave country, taking advantage of the fact that, with Uzushio gone, there are no protectors left in the area, and the villagers are so desperate for help that they thought lying to one of the five great villages would be a good idea.

Nawaki grits his teeth. He might be Konoha-born, and of the line of three out of four Hokages, but he’s always loved his grandmother’s country, and to see it fall in this state of despair  _ hurts. _

(Part of him is still considering leaving Konoha altogether, to track down the last remnants of Uzushio and rebuild the City amongst the whirlpools.)

(He tries not to think too much about this, because Konoha is his home, but the way things have been happening lately… None of his precious people are there anymore. He likes Iruka-sensei, and the Ichiraku's are nice enough, and the Sandaime tries, but all he can see are the empty spots where his people should be, Oro-sensei in the labs, Mito-baachan in the compound, Tsunade-nee punting Jiraya out of a window, Sakumo-san helping Natsu with his kenjutsu while Nanao-chan read under a tree… Nawaki is surrounded by ghosts, and he’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to take it.)

(He stays in Konoha despite that, at least for now, because part of him is still waiting for Tsunade-nee to come home.)

(Everything will be alright if she comes home.)

* * *

“You are too fond of explosions for it to be healthy” Kakashi drawls once they’re on the road again, having decided to pursue the mission despite the information which had been revealed.

“I’m a thirteen year old boy” Nawaki deadpans. “Of course I’m going to be fond of explosions.”

(He’s not actually. Not thirteen years old - but not twenty-six as he would be if you added his two lifetimes together, because he has the memories of another thirteen years, yes, but he’s still just a boy, just a young teenager lost in a world that should be familiar but isn’t - and not fond of explosions either.)

(He died because of an explosion.)

(He’s _terrified_ of them. Or, at least, he was when they started that unit in the Academy. He forced himself to use them, to witness them until he could function around them and use them like any ninja would, because he couldn’t, wouldn’t let that happen to him again.)

(He used to love explosions, as a kid, much to Oro-sensei’s dismay. Now he has to force himself not run away at the simple idea of one.)

* * *

There’s a rustle in the bush, and Nawaki throws a kunai at it instinctively. It turns out to be a rabbit - but it’s white, and it’s not the right season for that, and he throws himself at their client at the same time as Kakashi yells at them to duck.

The massive cleaver cuts the air where they had been seconds earlier.

The man wielding it appears in front of them, and it’s all Nawaki can do not to rush at him blindly when he sees the Kiri insignia on his hitai-ite. 

The man might be a missing-nin, but to see a Kiri-nin on what had been Uzushio territory makes his hackles rise.

Zabuza is on a totally different level than the demon brothers. They manage to scrape a win more through luck than anything else, and the intervention of a hunter nin that had supposedly been tracking Zabuza. It’s too convenient, in Nawaki’s opinion, and he’s not surprised when, upon coming back to consciousness (because apparently Sakumo-san’s son has a sharingan implanted in one eye, which eats his chakra at unparalleled rates what the heck? Nawaki needs to get his hands on a recent bingo book asap.) Kakashi explains that it’s likely that it was Zabuza’s accomplice.

* * *

The only good thing about that situation is that Kakashi has had a harsh wake-up call and has finally decided to actually teach them something.

“Tree-climbing?” Nawaki deadpans.

(It’s becoming his constant expression when dealing with the headache that is Hatake Kakashi, he realizes)

But… tree climbing? He’s known how to do that since he was six the first time around! He hadn’t even realized that his teammates didn’t know how to do it, it seemed so natural for him! And he had been using it everyday since he started the Academy this time around to try and tame his seriously ridiculous chakra reserves.

He still can’t do a single Bunshin, and it annoys him like hell.

He walks up to the top of his tree, and looks down at his so-called teacher.

“And now?”

The anger in Sasuke’s expression is sweet. Nawaki knows he shouldn’t antagonize the Uchiha like that, but he can’t help it. The boy makes it too easy, seriously.

Kakashi tells him to join Tazuna on the bridge instead.

* * *

Nawaki’s clones turn out to be a godsend for the beleaguered bridge builder. Another three workers quit that day, and Nawaki understands a bit better why Tazuna’s grandson Inari seems to think that there’s nothing anyone can do when faced against Gato.

Despair is heavy in the ocean charged breeze, and Nawaki hates it, hates it because the smell of the sea should only ever be charged with joy and laughter, not tears and grief and resignation.

“I’ll defeat Gato” he tells Inari that evening, and he means every words.

* * *

He spends the night in the woods, tearing through his clones and trying to perfect the few water jutsus he has learned. They won’t do him much good against Kiri nins, but he can’t just do nothing either. And if Kakashi isn’t going to train him properly, he’ll just have to do it himself.

(Log, but how he misses Oro-sensei. They might have been thrown into a war as soon as they could throw a kunai straight, but Oro-sensei had always made damn sure that they knew how to keep themselves alive. That had meant long nights and early mornings, a heavy training regiment, and one-on-one attention after team training. Shadow clones may have been abused to do this, but Oro-sensei had never neglected any of their training. Natsu and Nawaki might have been clan brats, and Nanao might have been a civilian born orphan, but none of them had been treated differently.)

(Kakashi is a lousy teacher, for all that he’s supposed to be some kind of genius, and the only one he really focuses on is the Uchiha. Sakura is more worried about trying to woo Sasuke than about her own training, and said boy is a psych case waiting to happen, what with his obsession with revenge and killing his brother.)

(Log, he misses his team.)

(Seriously, reincarnation is not all that it is hyped up to be.)

* * *

He falls asleep out there, exhausted, and wakes with a kunai in his hand to find a person looking at him, hand extended as if to wake him.

He can’t quite determine if the person is a boy or a girl or neither or both, but he knows that they are dangerous. They don’t look dangerous, sure, wearing a woman's kimono, with long hair and a peaceful face, but Nawaki grew up during the second great shinobi war and has long since learned that appearances can be deceiving.

Still, Haku, as they introduce themselves, don’t seem to have any belligerent intentions right now, so Nawaki rolls with it and helps them gather the plants they are looking for.

“When you protect the ones important to you, your true strength will show.” Haku tells him.

Nawaki thinks of Tsunade-nee, of Mito-baachan, of Oro-sensei, of Natsu and Nanao-chan. He thinks of Iruka-sensei, of the Ichiraku's, of the friendly neighbour who brought him soup when he was ill, even of old man Hokage and the rest of team 7.

“Yeah” He says quietly. “I know.”

* * *

The next few days passes in a flurry of guard duty and training. Sakura turns out to be a natural at chakra control, and Kakashi sets her to water-walking as soon as she’s able to stay on a tree for more than a hour. Sasuke is still struggling, but he’s getting better. Kakashi himself is healing quite fast, and Nawaki can see that the man is worrying about their next confrontation with the Kiri missing-nins. In response to his team-leader's concerns, the reincarnated Senju starts leaving henged clones around Tazuna’s house and the area where Sasuke and Sakura train. They’re just a precaution, he tells himself, same as the seals he discreetly paints around the bridge to protect it from sabotage. Just a precaution.

He’s definitely grateful for his precautions when, on the day Kakashi predicted as being the most likely for Zabuza to have recovered fully, the entire team arrives at the bridge with Tazuna to find the few workers still left unconscious on the ground.

Zabuza is there, with his accomplice, and Nawaki is not as surprised as he probably should be to find that Haku is the accomplice in question. Zabuza is obviously the precious person whose dreams they wants to help him achieve, and Nawaki can respect that, really, he can, but they’re still from Kiri and threatening Nawaki’s client on Uzushio territory, so he snarls and throws himself in the fray, leaving a few clones behind to keep an eye on Tazuna and Sakura. In the back of his mind, he receives a message from the clones left at the house. Good, Tsunami and Inari are safe.

It turns out to be the only piece of good news, because Kakashi is kept busy by Zabuza, and Haku turns out to be a Hyoton user and locks Sasuke and Nawaki inside a cage made of ice mirrors. They are fast, and dangerously accurate with these needles of theirs, and Nawaki is hard pressed to deflect them before they hit him. Shizune-chan had expressed an interest in senbons, he remembers, had asked Tsunade-nee to show her where to hit someone to paralyse them, and Nawaki had ended up as their guinea pig enough times to know that he definitely did not want these needles anywhere near him. He chances a look towards Sasuke, and has to hold back a wince when he sees the sharingan red eyes. Log, that dojutsu is particularly creepy. But, he admits reluctantly as Sasuke’s speed and reaction time increase dramatically, it can be pretty useful. They start to retaliate, and just when Nawaki starts to think that they might have the upper hand, the Uchiha throws himself in front of him and takes a hit in his place. His chakra presence dwindles down to nothing, and the boy loses consciousness shortly after saying that his body had moved on his own.

Of all the times for the teme to develop a conscience! Naruto rages, anger roaring through his veins, and he feels, for the first time in his life, the dark chakra of the Kyuubi rising up to meet his.

Oh, he thinks stupidly, even as he roars in fury and rushes at Haku. Is this what Mito-baachan meant? It’s dark and angry and heavy, and the hate he can feel inside scares him to hell. 

Mito-baachan had to fight this every day? He thinks hysterically as he tries to push it back. How? It’s the first time he’s had to try and repress the beast inside him, and he’s panting already.

His kunai hits the ground centimeters from Haku’s head. The red chakra recedes, and he can breath again.

“Enough!” Nawaki snarls. “I’m not going to kill you, and you’re going to get your master and leave Wave once and for all, you hear me?”

Haku seems about to agree, looking terrified, when they suddenly slip from Nawaki’s grasp and rush towards Zabuza, who is about to take a Raiton jutsu to the chest as Kakashi’s nin-dogs hold him down. At the edge of his range, Nawaki can sense a mob of low-level chakra signatures, too twisted to be civilians, probably mercenaries hired by Gato then. Haku steps in front of their master, ready to take the killing hit in his stead, but Kakashi manages to avoid their vitals organs, hitting the teen’s shoulder instead. They cry out in pain, stumbling back slightly, but remain where they are, defiantly standing in front of their master. They rant about being Zabuza’s tool, and Nawaki kinda wants to slug them for such a depressing view of themselves, but the arrival of Gato and his band of thugs changes the game.

“Well, it looks like we have no reason to fight each other anymore, Hatake” Zabuza states once the diminutive tyrant reveals his not so cunning plan of killing Zabuza off to avoid having to pay him. “How do you want to do this?”

* * *

Together, as it turns out. The two oldest shinobi there tear through the ranks of the mercenaries like paper, leaving Gato for last, while Nawaki is left to bandage Haku’s shoulder before dragging them over to Sasuke’s unmoving body, next to which Sakura is kneeling and crying, with a barked order of “Fix it!”

By the time Kakashi and Zabuza come back to them, the teme is slowly coming back to consciousness and Nawaki has no problems abandoning him to Sakura’s sobbing mercy to report to his team leader.

“Sasuke’s sore, but he’ll live. Sakura stayed with the client, so she’s fine. Tsunami-san and Inari are okay, they were attacked by some thugs but I had left some clones behind just in case. When do they get the fuck out of here?” He adds, pointing at the Kiri-nin.

“Maa maa, Naruto-kun, is this how we talk with temporary allies?” Kakashi chastises him.

“That’s how I talk to someone who was trying to kill us all twenty minutes ago, and whose stupid village is partly responsible for this mess anyway.” Nawaki snaps, his patience used up. “They better be out of here soon or I will not be held responsible for my actions!”

Red chakra is starting to swirl around him once more, and Kakashi throws him a wary look. Strangely, or maybe not, the foreign chakra seems just as furious towards the Kiri-nins as Nawaki. It’s not responding to his anger, not just trying to get him to break the seal, but it’s actively rising up in defense of Uzushio. Then again, its previous two hosts had both been Uzushio princesses, one of which had lost her entire village shortly after taking the Kyuubi on. No wonder the thought of Kiri on their soil would rile it up so much.

“Calm down, Naruto-kun” His sensei orders.

“Get a grip, Kid” Zabuza snorts. “Enemy one days, allies the next, that’s how it is in the ninja world. You better learn to deal with it now.”

Nawaki clenches his fists so tightly that he can feel the blood dripping from where his nails bit through the skin.

“I don’t give a fuck about the fact that you tried to kill us earlier, Momochi. The mission is the mission and that’s it. But I’m an Uzumaki, Momochi-san” he bites out, pointing at the crimson and grey spiral on the shoulder of his deep blue shirt. “Forgive me if I don’t take kindly to the presence of Kiri-nins fucking things up on my family’s territory after their village teamed up with Iwa, Kumo and Ame to wipe Uzushiogakure, and with her the majority of my clan, off the map! So I’ll say it again, get the fuck out of Wave Country!”

With one last snarl, he turns around and heads back to Tazuna, who’s standing apart from the rest of them, still wary of the Kiri missing-nins. He’s done with this shit.

* * *

Thankfully for everyone involved, Zabuza and Haku leave as soon as the latter’s wound is treated enough to no longer be life-threatening. Sasuke is confined to bed rest, with Sakura assigning herself as his nursemaid. Wave is celebrating its liberation from Gato’s emprise, and Tazuna thanks them profusely for their help.

As soon as the man is gone, joining his fellow villagers in the throws of celebration, Kakashi’s hand clamps in a vice-like grip on Nawaki’s shoulder as he shunshins them to the clearing where he had shown them how to climb trees.

The teenager frees himself from his grip as soon as they land. Kakashi’s eyes are hard.

“What was this all about, Genin Uzumaki?” He barks out, and Nawaki winces slightly. He should have known that his little show of insubordination would cost him.

“It was exactly about what I said!” He retorts. “I am an Uzumaki, Kakashi-san. As were the two jinchuurikis before me! Uzushio was ours, and it fell because of Kiri, and they had no right to be on Uzushio soil!”

“And you nearly started another fight because of something that happened nearly four decades ago!” Kakashi shuts him down. “With one of your teammate injured, the other in a state of shock, and one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist in front of us! You’re damn lucky he didn’t decide to run you through after your little stunt! For log’s sake, Naruto, Zabuza wasn’t even born when Uzushio fell!”

The man took a deep breath.

“I will have to report this to the Hokage, especially since you used the Kyuubi’s chakra twice today. You conducted yourself exemplarily until then, even thinking of leaving a guard with Tsunami and Inari - though you should have informed me of it beforehand - but stunts like this one will not be tolerated any longer. You get angry, you damn well bite your tongue and let me do the talking. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir.” Nawaki grumbles.

“Good. You have the rest of the evening free. We’ll be staying until the bridge is done, so I expect you back on the bridge tomorrow morning.”

“Yes sir.”

* * *

Nawaki finds himself sitting at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean that night, looking at the water in the direction where Uzushio used to be. There was a time, he remembers, when, if the weather was good, you could nearly see the village hidden in the whirlpools from here. According to the history books in the library, there’s nothing left of it now, the magnificent city having crumbled into the water when her last defenders died, taking with her thousands of enemies who had been too close to the sinkhole.

Only the whirlpools remain, now, and Nawaki wishes he could see them. 

There’s a rustle on his left as Kakashi sits down.

“She was beautiful, you know?” Nawaki whispers, breaking the silence. “Uzushio. She was built on nine levels, surrounded by twenty-seven whirlpools. Her founders raised her from the sea bed, and she was made of white seastone and dark blue roofs, and when the sun set they say that the whole city would turn red and gold. There was a picture, in the history book.”

He brings his knees up under his chin, not looking at Kakashi. If he can’t see him, he can pretend it’s Sakumo-san sitting next to him instead.

“They managed to hold off the combined forces of Iwa, Ame, Kiri and Kumo for thirty-two days. Thirty-two days. They must have sent messengers to Konoha, asking for help, but they never arrived, probably dead before they reached the mainland. But they held them off, for thirty-two days, waiting for help that would never reach them. On the thirtieth day, when it became clear that no help was coming, the Uzukage ordered the evacuation of everyone under genin-level. Academy students, civilians, they were led out of the village through one of the secret paths and escaped. Many of them would be killed, but some of them managed to survive and disappeared in the mainland. The Uzukage rallied his remaining forces for one last-ditch assault in order to buy time for the escapees. They fought relentlessly, for two days and two nights, and when dawn broke on the thirty-third day, the Uzukage was the last Uzushio shinobi still standing. The Mizukage was the one who killed him, and when his body hit the ground the entire island collapsed, returning to the sea from which it had once risen, and taking scores of enemies with her.”

Silent tears are rolling down Nawaki’s face as he retells the story which he had read in Mito-baachan’s journals, the ones Sarutobi had handed him when he asked how his predecessors had dealt with having a giant chakra monster sealed into them. It had been brought to her by one of the last survivors, her sister Uzumaki Nami, the grandmother of the Uzukage, who had been severely injured during the attack and had washed up on the shores after the collapse of the island. She had died shortly afterwards, having lost everything that night.

“The Uzukage’s name was Uzumaki Arashi” Nawaki whispers quietly. “ The Storm God, they called him, he who unleashed the wrath of the sky and of the ocean on his enemies. He was my cousin a few times removed, I guess. But he was family. And I never knew him, never knew any of them, because Uzushio is gone and they went with her.”

There’s an awkward arm around his shoulder, and he’s gently tugged closer to the man sitting next to him.

“They were beautiful” he repeats, sobs wracking his body. “They were beautiful.”

* * *

(“Giving him Mito-sama’s journals might have been a mistake” Kakashi tells the Hokage. “The fall of Uzushio is an open wound. He nearly attacked Zabuza when he didn’t leave what Naruto called “Uzushio’s territory” fast enough.”

“He is a child, Kakashi-kun. A child who found out that the family he could have had was utterly destroyed. Of course he’s going to be angry. But he used the Kyuubi’s chakra first to protect a teammate, and he didn’t lose control. I think there’s no need to worry about this for now.”)

* * *

In his small apartment, Nawaki lights some incense and prays for the souls of those who fell defending Uzushio. There’s a small, metallic plate on his altar now, with the Uzushio spiral carefully carved on it. It had been a present from Tazuna, after the battle, something that had washed up on Wave’s shores after the Fall.

(There’s another one, still fastened to an old, salt-encrusted, dark-grey cloth, hidden in Nawaki’s pack.)

(Maybe, it whispers to him. Maybe one day.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...
> 
> I did warn you about the feels. And the angst.
> 
> And it's going to get worse. Because next chapter will be the beginning of the chunin exams. And Nawaki's first time seeing Orochimaru since his reincarnation. And that? Is going to be heartbreaking.
> 
> Hope you liked this chapter ! Let me know what you thought!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The three Oto shinobi try to kill him, but they don’t really measure up to Nawaki’s endless army of cannon fodder.
> 
> Kage Bunshin is truly a log-sent jutsu, Nawaki muses as his clones beat the crap out of his assailants.
> 
> That’s when a shitton of killing intent reaches him, and he’s running towards it before he realises it. Not because it’s coming from the same direction as his teammates, or at least not only. But because he knows this chakra, knows this killing intent, knows it despite having never felt it in this life.
> 
> Oro-sensei. That’s Oro-sensei chakra, he’s back, he’ll explain, he’ll fix this, he’s Oro-sensei, Nawaki chants mentally. He was always looking for the secret of reincarnation, and now Nawaki can tell him that reincarnation is real, that it truly works, and then Oro-sensei can help him find Tsunade-nee and things will make sense again and …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go again! This time, the first and second rounds of the chunin exams are on the menu! And with them Nawaki's first brush with Orochimaru...
> 
> You might want to bring your own tissues, that's all I'm saying :P
> 
> Usual warnings apply: Angst, Feels, Canon-typical violence  
Also I'm not sure if it should count as suicidal thoughts, but Nawaki is definitely not happy to have been reincarnated right now...
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy this chapter!

It’s been a few months since their mission to Wave now, and they’ve mostly been kept inside the village. They do a few more C-ranks, mostly escort missions and messenger duty, but for the most part they remain inside the walls.

Kakashi takes him aside one day after team training (if it can be called that, whent).

“There will be foreign shinobis arriving in the village soon,” He tells him bluntly. “They will be here for the chunin exams. You will keep your temper in check, is that clear?”

“Yes sir!” Nawaki responds. He is better than that, should not allow his emotions to get the best of him. “Are you going to nominate us, Kakashi-san?”

“Maybe,” the jounin answers. “And how many time will I have to tell you that it’s “Kakashi-sensei”, Naruto-kun?”

You don’t see me complaining about everybody using a wrong name for me, Nawaki wants to retort, but he shrugs instead.

He never took the chunin exams before. They hadn’t been held in his days, wartime rules meaning that promotions were obtained through fieldwork rather than exams. Nawaki hadn’t lived long enough to earn one of these either.

* * *

He bumps into a team from Suna when he keeps an eye on Konohamaru for the Hokage. 

The two shinobis in front of him are definitely good contenders for the promotion, if their chakra reserves are anything to go by. The boy needs to learn to control his temper better, though, because assaulting a child in an allied village is never a good idea, especially when the kid in question is the Hokage’s grandson and constantly watched over by at least two ANBUs. The situation is diffused by their third teammate’s intervention, however, and Nawaki can’t help the shiver that goes through him when he meets the redhead’s eyes. His chakra feels foul, dark and heavy in a way that is similar, though not identical, to the Kyuubi’s.

Suna has the Ichibi, Nawaki remembers with a start, and kind of wants to punch his grandfather in the family jewels for even thinking that distributing the bijuus to other villages would achieve anything other than more conflict. Because from the feel of things, the Ichibi’s seal is a lot looser than Nawaki’s, which means that the boy probably has access to more of his bijuu’s chakra, but at the same time that the bijuu is able to influence him more easily.

Log damn it, Hashirama-jii really should have listened to Mito-baachan on this one.

* * *

Kakashi enters them into the exams, but neglects to inform them of the fact until the day before. Nawaki really, really wants to hurt him. Sakumo-san would understand, surely. Besides, he’s pretty sure that no jury would convict him if he did, not if they had met the man beforehand.

* * *

It’s weird, seeing the rest of the rookies again. They all seem so… childish. Nawaki is technically twice their age now, and he finds them simultaneously annoying and refreshing.

The grey-haired older teen who approaches them immediately sets him on edge. There’s something not quite right about him, and his info cards are too good. There is no way a simple genin, even one apparently trying for the title of next eternal genin, should have been able to access that kind of classified information.

* * *

The first part of the exam is intel gathering. The questions are hard, impossible for anyone not a Nara or possessing a photographic memory. But the exam is held in a classroom Nawaki used to have classes in, and one of the desks still sports a little seal disguised as a random doodle. Luckily for him, the person sitting there seems to be one of the plants, and quick scribble in the corner of Nawaki’s own test paper results in the correct answers appearing on it. Mito-baachan would have tanned his hide for it. Tsunade-nee’s teammate Jiraya had been the one to teach it to him.

He adds a note in a code his next-door neighbour, who works part-time in T&I, taught him, about Kabuto and his info-cards. Better safe than sorry, after all, and if anyone can determine if it’s relevant or not, it’s the head of T&I. 

Morino-san lecture about the importance of information and the responsibilities of a chunin silences the protests when the truth behind the tenth question is revealed. The man has style, Nawaki has to give it to him. His glare reminds him somewhat of his great-uncle’s. Senju Tobirama had not smiled often, despite being quite fond of his brother’s grandchildren.

* * *

Mitarashi’s entrance startles most of the participants. Nawaki is peripherally aware of her - her status as Oro-sensei’s last apprentice is widely known, as is her fondness for sicking her snakes on those who ask her about it. He’s never tried to approach her, though. He still cannot believe that Oro-sensei would betray the village like that, and Mitarashi is quite explicit when it comes to what she would do to her former sensei should she happen upon him.

She leads them to the forest of Death, and it takes all he has not to groan. Most of the creature inside it are at least partly Oro-sensei’s fault, and as a result are bigger, meaner, weirder and more aggressive versions of their normal counterparts. Getting his team out of this alive is going to be a pain in the ass, never mind the fighting with other teams.

(He’ll never willingly admit that he’s partly to blame for the exploding squirrels. To this day, he still doesn’t know how he and Nanao-chan had managed to create them when their original goal had been to give them chameleon-like properties in order to use them as intel gatherers. Natsu had laughed himself sick that day, and Oro-sensei had sighed in that long-suffering way that meant that he was wondering just why he had accepted them as his students again.)

* * *

Thankfully, an Ame ninja seems to think that he’s an easy target, and Nawaki gets to vent some of his frustration out on the guy. It doesn’t help that Sasuke and Sakura still treat him like an idiot most of the time, and refuse to listen to his plan to get to the tower as fast as possible and to set traps in the area. Instead, because of Mr I-need-to-test-my-strength-against-better-opponents, they are trying to find some team to attack when a huge gust of wind suddenly separates him from his team.

That is bad enough without finding himself swallowed by a giant snake upon landing.

Now, don’t get him wrong, Nawaki loves snakes. Adores them, in fact, ever since Oro-sensei introduced his students to his summons. Had been looking forwards to adding his name to the list of snake summoners.

That does not mean that he appreciates being eaten alive by one. With a mental apology to his sensei, Nawaki summons enough Kage Bunshins to give the reptile an indigestion, and tears through the snake’s skin to escape.

The three Oto shinobi try to kill him, but they don’t really measure up to Nawaki’s endless army of cannon fodder.

Kage Bunshin is truly a log-sent jutsu, Nawaki muses as his clones beat the crap out of his assailants.

That’s when a shitton of killing intent reaches him, and he’s running towards it before he realises it. Not because it’s coming from the same direction as his teammates, or at least not only. But because he knows this chakra, knows this killing intent, knows it despite having never felt it in this life.

Oro-sensei. That’s Oro-sensei chakra, he’s back, he’ll explain, he’ll fix this, he’s Oro-sensei, Nawaki chants mentally. He was always looking for the secret of reincarnation, and now Nawaki can tell him that reincarnation is real, that it truly works, and then Oro-sensei can help him find Tsunade-nee and things will make sense again and …

* * *

When he reaches the clearing, the person facing his teammates looks nothing like Oro-sensei. They’re a kunoichi from Kusa, chuckling creepily at his frozen teammates who look worse for wear. Nawaki’s arrival seem to shock them out of their fear, for Sasuke’s first reaction is to yell at him to run. The Uchiha looks terrified, and Sakura is gripping a kunai so hard her hand is starting to bleed. Their scroll lies discarded to the side. Obviously, that isn’t what the stranger wants. Given the way that she's focusing on Sasuke, Nawaki has a bad feeling about this. Nevertheless, if there’s one thing Kakashi taught them, it’s to have each other's back. There is no way Nawaki is leaving his teammates to deal with that creep on their own. There is no way that kunoichi is genin, or even chunin-level.

Working together, they manage to put some distance between them, and even to set her on fire at some point.

What happens after that is a blurr. The kunoichi comes out of the fire and her skin is peeling off, like Oro-sensei’s snake’s did when it was time to shed, and she rips it off to reveal another face underneath it.

Nawaki’s heart stops for an instant, because it’s Oro-sensei. It’s him and it isn’t, it’s his face and his chakra and his voice and his jutsus, but it can’t be him, because Oro-sensei wouldn’t be attacking them, wouldn’t be trying to kill Sakura and Nawaki while sweet-talking Sasuke.

Because Oro-sensei would recognize Nawaki, right? Even if he doesn’t look like Nawaki anymore, Oro-sensei would recognize him, would be overjoyed to see him, would make everything alright again, right? _Right?!_

* * *

Wrong. Orochimaru of the Sannin, traitor to Konoha and Otokage, bats Nawaki away as if he's nothing more than a persistent fly. Nawaki hits a tree, hard, and he’s still trying to breathe again when a fist slams into his stomach and his chakra goes crazy.

A seal, he realizes. An odd one, meant to disrupt his chakra pathways, especially when applied over an even one like the one containing the Kyuubi. Oro-sensei just attacked him, crippled his chakra, without a care in the world.

The last thing he sees before losing consciousness is Orochimaru’s neck stretching to impossible length and fangs sinking in Sasuke’s neck.

Why? He sobs inwardly as darkness takes over his sight. Why would you do that, sensei?

(Why him and not me? a part of him screams. Why are even you choosing the last Uchiha over me? Am I not good enough? What did I do? I’m sorry for being reckless sensei, I didn’t mean to set that trap off, I didn’t mean to die, please don’t leave me here, please please please…)

* * *

When he wakes, it’s to find that Sakura had to fight a team of Oto-ninjas targeting Sasuke. She’s bruised and battered, her prided hair cut short in a choppy way that indicates that a kunai was taken to it, and she’s throwing anxious glances at Sasuke. Neither of them will tell him what happened, but the edges of a seal that he can spot on the Uchiha’s neck tell him enough.

The seal reeks of Orochimaru’s chakra (Orochimaru, not Oro-sensei, Nawaki needs to separate the two of them because if he doesn’t he’ll lose it), something dark and twisted, and Nawaki knows that thing needs to be erased as soon as possible, despite Sasuke’s insistence that it’s nothing and that they are not going to report it. 

He also knows very well that it’s both out of his league and not something his teammates would trust him to do, and he resolves to inform Kakashi as soon as they get out of the forest, no matter what the Uchiha thinks about it. That thing is dangerous, and Nawaki will not tolerate it on his teammates one minute longer than he has to.

Which is why, as soon as they reach the tower after somehow managing to get their missing scroll and are greeted by Iruka-sensei after solving a riddle, Nawaki walks up to the chunin before he can dismiss them.

“Genin Uzumaki Naruto of Team Seven would like to report on an encounter with missing-nin Orochimaru of the Dentetsu no Sannin,” He says quietly, and he somehow manages to keep the heartbreak from his voice. He can feel Sasuke’s heated glare on his back, a warning not to mention what had happened to him. Though luck, Nawaki is in no mood to make concession for possibly suicidal morons. “And on his particular interest in Uchiha Sasuke, to the point of branding him with an unknown seal.”

That gets Iruka-sensei moving faster than Nawaki had ever seen him. He’s suddenly behind Sasuke, gripping him by the shoulders to prevent him from moving as he takes a closer look at his neck. Swearing in a manner unbecoming of any teacher, he raises a hand to the radio in his ear.

“ANBU to reception room five, now! We have a code snakebite!” He snaps. Turning to the trio of genin, he adds. “Sit down and don’t move from here until the ANBU say that you can! This is a serious matter, and should have been the first thing you told me upon arriving! Don’t glare at me Sasuke, this is more important than your pride!”

Before Sasuke can retort, two whole ANBU teams rush into the room, closely followed by the Hokage and Kakashi. Quickly taking in the situation, Iruka restraining a rebellious Sasuke, Sakura near tears and Nawaki grimly serious, the old man immediately turns to the latter.

“Report.” He orders. 

And Nawaki does, reciting what he had witnessed.

“We were looking for a team to attack when we were separated by a massive fuuton jutsu. I landed on a huge snake, which swallowed me whole. After managing to kill it and ascertaining that it wasn’t a summon but one of the natural dwellers of the forest, I was attacked by three Oto shinobis, but managed to dispatch them with help from my clones. I then rushed back to where I had last seen my teammates, and where a huge amount of killing intent could be felt. They were being confronted by what seemed to be a kunoichi from Kusa, who was focusing on Uchiha Sasuke, taunting him and goading him. We managed to catch them with a massive katon jutsu, but they simply shrugged it off and ripped off their face as if it were a mask. I recognized them as Orochimaru of the Dentetsu no Sannin, and tried to head him off long enough for us to escape. I was however unable to do so. The last I remember is him slamming a seal on my stomach that disturbed my chakra control and biting down on Uchiha Sasuke’s neck. When I regained consciousness, we had been attacked by another Oto team, on orders of Orochimaru, apparently to test Uchiha Sasuke. At that time, Uchiha Sasuke’s behaviour was erratic and Haruno Sakura seemed afraid of him, and I noticed a weird seal on his neck. When I mentioned getting him to a medic and a competent seal master, I was brushed off and told to mind my own business. I chose to ignore this as the presence of known missing-nin Orochimaru of the Sannin was a matter of village security, and reported this to Umino Iruka.”

He keeps his voice even, somehow, manages not to let his devastation show on his face or in his chakra, concentrates on being the perfect ninja, on giving an exact report and not leaving anything, even as his mind is _screaming_ in anguish.

“Thank you, Naruto-kun, you did exactly what you needed to do. Please follow Bear, he’ll have someone take a look at the seal that was placed on you. Sparrow, get me Jiraya. _Now_. Hatake, you take Uchiha to the bunker room. You will still be able to continue the exams, but these seals must be taken care of now. Cat, escort Haruno-san to team 7’s quarters and keep watch. I don’t think anyone will try to target them again, but better safe than sorry. Actually, put a guard on every team in the tower under the excuse of preventing sabotage.”

* * *

Nawaki hasn’t seen the man look so grim since the second war. He follows the bear masked ANBU out of the room, ignoring the glare Sasuke is sending his way, and finds himself in a private room with a bed, a table and a chair. Pretty spartan, but then again the tower isn’t supposed to be an hotel. Shrugging, he jumps on the bed and sits down. Soon enough, the door opens again, and another shinobi enters the room. Shoulder-length hair held back by his hitai-ite, jounin vest and a senbon in his mouth, Nawaki is glad to recognize Shiranui Genma.

“Genma-san!” He greets happily, his first smile of the day. “I didn’t know you knew sealing!”

His next door neighbour ruffles his hair.

“I was on the Yondaime’s guard detail, gaki. Trust me, all of us had to learn at least the basics of fuinjutsu. It was self-defense, really. Now, Iruka tells me the snake fucker hit you with a weird seal on your stomach?”

“Yeah” Nawaki nods, taking off his shirt and channeling some chakra, making the seals appear. “Right on top of the Kyuubi’s, so he probably knew I was the jinchuuriki beforehand.”

“Which means he has at least some sources in the village,” Genma groans. “Then again, I guess it wouldn’t be a far stretch for someone who knew the two previous jinchuurikis were Uzumaki’s to presume that you would be one too. Sucks to be you, kid.”

“Story of my life,” the Uzumaki in question mutters. “Can you get that thing off? I worked damn hard to get somewhat decent at chakra control, and that stupid seal is messing everything up.”

Genma chuckles as he takes out his brush and ink set. “Sure thing, kiddo. Fair warning, Jiraya-sama is going to want to take a look at your other seal once the prelims are over, just to make sure nothing was damaged. He’s gonna be busy with the Uchiha beforehand, so expect a visit afterwards. He was the Yondaime’s teacher, and Konoha’s foremost sealmaster, so he’s probably the best one to check if nothing’s wrong.”

Nawaki grimaces.

“Isn’t he also the old pervert that writes these porn books that Kakashi-san likes so much?”

“Stop moving around,” The jounin admonishes him as he starts writing over the new seal. “And yes, he is, much to his pride. I keep meaning to ask, why do you call your sensei Kakashi-san and not Kakashi-sensei?”

The boy made a face.

“The day he actually teaches us something, I might start calling him sensei. All he does is arrive three hours late, make us go through some half-assed teamwork exercises, and then it’s D-ranks for the rest of the day. He didn’t even think about teaching our team tree-walking before we encountered chunin and jounin level missing nins on our first C-rank. He mostly focuses on the Uchiha now that he’s got his sharingan. I train on my own most days, but I’m not sure about Sakura.”

Genma grimaces in sympathy.

“Sorry to hear that. Hatake is a genius, but sometimes I think he just doesn’t get that not everyone is. You know the saying, those who can’t do teach? Well Hatake’s the opposite. He’s one of the best shinobi in the village, but it comes so easily to him that he doesn’t understand that others don’t, and he doesn’t know how to explain it to them.”

A pause.

“Well, that and he’s fundamentally fucked up after losing everyone he cared about before his fifteenth birthday,” he adds bluntly. “Believe it or not, he used to be a stickler to the rules, never a second late, stick up his arse all the way. But then one of his teammates died in the third war, the other one committed suicide by teammate when Kiri captured her, sealed the Sanbi in her and tried to unleash her on Konoha, and we both know what happened to the Yondaime. He disappeared into ANBU afterwards, and only came out again last year. But that’s still no excuse to neglect your training. Tell you what, if you pass the prelims and Hatake doesn’t plan anything for you, hit me up and we’ll see what we can do to help you out.”

Nawaki smiles.

“Thanks, Genma-san. I really want to make chunin on my first try!”

The “to get off this clusterfuck of a team” goes unspoken.

“I have no doubt that you will, kiddo. Now, brace yourself, this might hurt a bit,” Genma warns him, before slamming his chakra coated hand onto the seal.

It hurts more than a bit, but Nawaki grits his teeth and doesn’t scream. As soon as Genma takes his hand away, he can feel the difference in his chakra.

“Better?”

“Much better!” The boy nods enthusiastically. “Ne, Genma-san, could you teach me fuinjutsu?”

The jounin startles, but Nawaki is talking again.

“I mean I have some of my mother’s notes, and some of Mito-sama, and I’m trying to learn, but…”

Genma mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like _“the apple doesn’t fall far from the three with this one_”, but gives Nawaki a smile.

“We’ll see,” He answers. “And you might be better off asking Jiraya-sama instead. He was the Yondaime’s sensei, he knows more about sealing than I do.”

Maybe, but despite the forest, despite everything he’s seen and heard in this Konoha that still feels foreign to him, despite the fact that Jiraya was the teacher of Nawaki’s second life father, Nawaki is not about to ask Oro-sensei teammate for lessons. It would be different if it were Tsunade-nee, because Tsunade-nee is  _ family _ , and family comes before  _ everything _ , but this is not the case. Despite everything, he’s still a proud member of Oro-sensei’s Team 8, and becoming Jiraya’s student would be betraying that.

(But Oro-sensei betrayed you first, a voice in his head whispers. Betrayed the village, betrayed everything you once wanted to protect.)

(Shut up, he thinks back. Shut up _shut up <strike>shut up</strike>_.)

* * *

Genma escorts him back to the rooms that have been set aside for team 7. Sasuke isn’t back yet, but Sakura is there, sitting on one of the beds and wringing her hands with worry. As soon as Nawaki enters the room, she jumps up.

“Are you alright?” She asks, biting her lip.

“Yeah, thanks to Genma-san” he answers, pointing to his escort, who waves at Sakura, ruffles Nawaki’s hair and takes his leave. Neko is still standing guard in front of the door, he notes.

“And Sasuke-kun? Do you know when he’s coming back?”

“No clue” He answers honestly, dropping down on one of the other beds and unsealing a ration bar from one of his scrolls. “But his seal is way more complicated than mine, so it’s gonna take a while.”

“I… why did you disobey Sasuke-kun?” She asks quietly, not quite meeting his eyes, but with a clear undertone of anger in her voice. “He told us not to say anything about it!”

Nawaki sighs.

“Sakura. You saw Iruka-sensei’s reaction when I told him. You saw the Hokage’s. That thing is bad news, nevermind the fact that we had to fight for our lives against one of the legendary three. The Dentetsu no Sannin, the students of the Sandaime. And not only that, but the one who was deemed the genius, the prodigy of the team, who was once considered for the title of Yondaime and is all-around one of the strongest shinobi the village ever produced. A man who, according to the history books and his behaviour today, betrayed everything the village stands for, and experimented on himself and others. Given that the ANBU have a code Snakebite, it sounds like it isn’t the first time they’ve come across a seal like this one. And given their expressions, it isn’t anything good, and they probably don’t have an easy fix for it if they had to call for Jiraya-sama, another of the Dentetsu no Sannin and the only one remaining in the village. So don’t you dare blame me for ignoring Sasuke’s order when I may have saved his life.”

Not that the idiot Uchiha was in any position to give him order anyway. Kakashi had never officially nominated a team leader, so Nawaki was in no way shape or form a subordinate of the psychotic break in waiting.

_ <strike> (Yes he's bitter what was your first clue?) </strike> _

He tears his ration bar open angrily.

“But how do you know all this?!” Sakura shrieks. “You never listened in school! I didn’t even know who he was!”

Nawaki blinks.

“I only joined your class for your graduation year, remember? I failed the test twice before. And I had Higuro-sensei in history for the two years before that. When one girl, I think her name was Tenten or something, asked him about Senju Tsunade, the best combat medic-nin in the world, he decided to dedicate an hour to each of the Sannin. He was… thorough in his description of Orochimaru’s betrayal. After that, I looked them up in one of the old bingo books they keep in the library.”

“And the seal? How did you know about that ? You were unconscious!”

“The last thing I saw was Sasuke getting bitten. I spotted a black spot on his neck when I woke up after these Oto nins attacked us and it felt _foul_,” he grimaces, thinking back to the feeling of slimy darkness emanating from the seal. At Sakura’s skeptical look, he glared at her. “I’m an Uzumaki, Sakura. My people invented fuinjutsu. It’s in our blood, not quite a bloodline, but close. Are you going to interrogate me all night for doing my job as a shinobi of Konohagakure, or can I get some sleep now?”

The rest of the night is spent in silence.

* * *

They still have two days before the end of the task, and Nawaki keeps to himself. Sakura goes out to join team ten once they arrive, still fretting about her precious Sasuke-kun, and there’s not much more of it than Nawaki can take. He’s too angry at the Uchiha to care, at the moment.

(Angry at him for not listening to his plan at the beginning of the task, angry at him for being so arrogant as to think that he could deal with that horrid seal on his own.)

(More than that, he’s angry at Sasuke for being worth more in the eyes of Orochimaru than him.)

So he stays in their quarters instead, goes through his equipment methodically, cleans and sharpens all of his weapons and makes sure that the few tags he has in his pouch are in top condition. Genma mentioned that there would be preliminaries if too many teams made it through the forest, so it’s best to be prepared.

(And if it allows him to avoid thinking about Oro-sen - no, Orochimaru, and what he’s become, well. No one needs to know.)

(Not that it works, and it's a good thing Nawaki is a silent crier and that he heals fast enough that the tear tracks are gone by the time morning comes.)

(He should never have been reincarnated.)

<strike>(He should just have stayed dead.)</strike>

<strike>(Dead people don't get their hearts torn open.)</strike>

* * *

As Genma predicted, there are preliminaries. Too many teams made it through, all the Rookie teams from Konoha amongst them, as well as Kabuto’s team and a team with a Hyuuga, the taijutsu specialist in a green jumpsuit and bowlcut who fought Sasuke before the first task, and Tenten, ga irl he remembers from his first few years at the Academy whose ambition had been to become as great a kunoichi as Tsunade-nee. A worthy goal, in Nawaki’s eyes, and one of the reasons he had bothered to remember her name beside the fact that she was one of the few girls who actually gave a damn about her training.

The prelims are also the first time they see Sasuke again since their arrival. Kakashi is standing close to him, strategically placed between the fuming Uchiha and Nawaki. It seems that two days of isolation had done nothing to dull the boy’s anger at being handed over to people who knew better than him the risks of having a strange seal put on them by a kage-level nukenin. Thankfully, before Sakura has a chance to fawn over the dark-haired boy, the first fight is announced.

Sasuke is up against one of Kabuto’s teammates (the grey haired genin had forfeited when given the opportunity, giving weight to Nawaki’s feeling that there is something not quite right with the guy) whose bloodline apparently allows him to steal someone’s chakra. He would have been a perfect opponent for Nawaki, whose immense chakra reserve would have overloaded the guy’s chakra coils, but Sasuke doesn’t have that option.

Instead, the Uchiha use a taijutsu Nawaki immediately recognizes as belonging to Tenten’s teammate, Rock Lee. Apparently, the Uchiha had copied it during their earlier fight. Nawaki grits his teeth in anger, and notices that he isn’t the only one. Lee seems crushed, and Tenten is visibly restraining herself from throwing sharp and pointy things at Nawaki’s teammate. Their sensei, a weird guy looking like an adult version of Lee, is glaring at Kakashi in a way that promises a heated discussion as soon as the battle is over. The other Konoha senseis look disapproving too. It’s one thing for an Uchiha to copy jutsus from enemies, that's encouraged, hell that's the whole reason Kakashi is named Copy-Nin. But from a fellow Konoha nin? Without permission? And renaming it in a feeble attempt to hide the theft? That went against the code that even the most stuck up Uchihas used to live by.

Uchiha Sasuke isn’t making any friends amongst the older shinobis today, despite winning his fight relatively easily.

As soon as his fight is over, the boy heads back to the railings where the contestants wait for their fights. Predictably, Sakura starts to praise him, but a sharp word from Kakashi quiets her. Nawaki’s fight is announced next, so he doesn’t hear what is being said, but since Gai-sensei is heading towards them as he goes down to the arena to face Kiba, odds are that Sasuke’s will be getting an overdue reminder of the Uchiha code of conduct amongst allies.

* * *

His fight with Kiba is disappointing. While the boy had been something of a friend back in their last year at the Academy, he obviously still sees Nawaki as the deadlast student that prejudice from the teachers, boredom and a lack of motivation made him look like. Nawaki ends it quickly, using his clones to confuse both master and dog before using a minor water jutsu to make the ground slippery. When the duo tries to use a Getsuga, they slip, and end up crashing head first into the wall of the arena.

Sakura ties against Ino in a demonstration of wasted potential, both girls showing that they have the capacities, but at the same time showing a lack of ability to use them.

Tsunade-nee will hate how far the level of the kunoichis has fallen, Nawaki thinks. Shizune-chan could probably have beaten them, and she had been five the last time Nawaki had seen her.

Tenten does a much better showing, but the Suna kunoichi she’s up against is probably the worst possible match-up for the weapon mistress. She goes down, hard, and Nawaki frowns at the way Temari catches her on her fan in a move that could have broken her back.

What is it with these Suna-nins? They’re supposed to be their allies, but the team they sent certainly isn’t putting any efforts in maintaining good inter village relations. Kankuro’s actions against Konohamaru alone would have seen the entire team thrown out of the village under Tobirama-oji’s reign, and frankly Nawaki doesn't understand why it doesn't warrant the same reaction now!

* * *

He sees red during the fight opposing the two Hyuugas, and has to keep a tight lid on his chakra or risk the Kyuubi’s coming out. He totally agrees that the whole Hyuuga clan is a fucking mess, but taking it out on little Hinata-chan is out of line. Thankfully, the sensei’s step in before he can kill her, but the simple fact that Neji tried to kill his cousin for something she has no control over makes Nawaki vow to kick the guy’s ass if they face each other in the finals.

For Nawaki, who had been raised by a loving family and taught that family is everything, for Nawaki who had woken up an orphan with no surviving relative, alone against the world, hurting a member of one’s family is amongst the worst crimes one could ever commit.

(For Nawaki, who has just been attacked by the closest thing to family he has left in the village?)

(For Nawaki, whose heart is a bleeding wound torn apart by Oro-sensei's lack of recognition more than by the actual attack?)

(It's _unacceptable.)_

He’s still thinking about the best way to humiliate the arrogant Hyuuga, paying just enough attentions to the fights to take note of the different fighting styles (Shikamaru will be a pain to fight, Nawaki really hopes not to come up against him during the third part) when the corrosive chakra of Suna’s jinchuuriki, Sabaku no Gaara, flows into the arena. His opponent is Lee, probably one of the few who has a chance to survive the sandman’s sand, but even so Nawaki can’t see any way for Lee to come out unscathed. And the odds that Gaara will kill him outright are high.

“Gai-sensei,” He quietly alerts the man who is watching the fight with attention. “Be ready to step in. Gaara… he’s like me. Lower number, higher influence. Blood crazy.”

Gai startles at that, but nods gratefully.

Nawaki’s warning comes not a moment too soon, as second laters Lee cries out in pain as his legs are crushed by the unforgiving sand. The proctor declares the Suna nin’s victory, but the sand doesn’t recede and is about to crush the poor genin to paste when Gai manages to rip his student away. At the same time, Nawaki releases a water bullet, slugging the sand down just enough to allow Gai and Lee some breathing room.

Even Gaara’s sensei seems terrified of him, he notes when the man jumps down into the arena to control his student.

_How the fuck is this his life?_

* * *

In the end, Naruto, Sasuke, Neji, Shino and Shikamaru are the only Konoha ninjas to make it to the finals. And when the first fights are revealed, Nawaki’s grin turns sharp.

_ Uzumaki Naruto vs Hyuuga Neji _

_ Sabaku no Kankuro vs Aburame Shino _

_ Uchiha Sasuke vs Sabaku no Gaara _

_ Nara Shikamaru vs Dosu of the Sound _

_ Sabaku no Temari vs the winner of the previous match. _

This promises to be _interesting_...

* * *

(When Nawaki gets home, he curls up on his bed and _cries_. He cries for Oro-sensei, for Nanao-chan and Natsu, for Tsunade-Nee and Dan and Shizune-chan and Mito-baachan and Kagami-oji and Sakumo-san and all the people he has lost.)

(He can't even bring himself to add a memento for Oro-sensei on his shrine, because while the person who attacked him is no longer Oro-sensei it's still _Orochimaru_ and that means Oro-sensei isn't _gone_ and Nawaki can't even mourn him properly and it _hurts_, it hurts _so much_ Nawaki wants to turn his heart into _stone_ to stop it from hurting.)

(But he _can't_, so he cries and cries and cries and then he wipes the tears away and takes out Uzumaki Kushina's sealing notes and starts practicing his seals because he needs to do something productive and familiar and something that is still _his_, no matter what name he's wearing.)

* * *

Just as Nawaki and Genma had predicted he would, Kakashi informs Nawaki a few days later that he won’t be able to train him for the finals, being needed to train Sasuke. The man tries to impose Ebisu on him, but Konohamaru’s tutor is quick to direct Nawaki towards Genma as soon as Kakashi is out of earshot.

“My old genin teammate speaks highly of you, Uzumaki-kun,” the man says. “He warned me that Hatake-san might try to foist you onto someone else, and asked me to make sure you went to see him if that were the case.”

“Genma-san is pretty awesome,” Nawaki replies, because it’s true.

His neighbour is a mother-hen of the highest order, as he had found out the first time he had met him, one of the rare time in his life he had been sick. The man had heard the violent coughs through the walls, and had barged into his apartment with soup and blankets. But he’s also the only one who spotted the seals painted on his walls, and instead of telling anyone about it he had taught Nawaki some neat traps to place on his door and windows.

He’s one of the few people in this Konoha that Nawaki would miss if he left. He reminds him of Kato Dan somewhat, the way he cared about everyone. Genma-san is a lot more sarcastic, and a lot less prim and proper, but both of them care deeply for the people they see as theirs.

(Both have also, as Nawaki found out, the habit of taking in strays of all sorts. Exhibit A. Himself, Exhibit B, Kotetsu and Izumo, who had practically been raised by the man after losing their parents during the Kyuubi attack. Dan used to do that too, volunteering at the orphanage, taking in Shizune after his sister’s death, grabbing three street urchins and declaring them his genin team.)

(He misses him.)

* * *

He’s accosted by Jiraya before he can reach Genma-san, and the old pervert introduces himself in an absolutely ridiculous fashion that makes him want to hurl. He hasn’t changed much, looks exactly the same as he did thirty years ago, with perhaps some more age lines on his face, and it’s another blast from the past that Nawaki could have done without. There's been too many of these lately, none of them kind. But Jiraya does know his seals, Nawaki is forced to admit, and the man is quick to spot the slight weakening of one of the sub matrixes that would allow the fox to influence him more. He fixes it quickly, with a few brushstrokes, and Nawaki thinks that that’s it until the Gama-Sennin announces that he’s going to take over his training for the month before the exam in order to make sure that his seal has not been too damaged.

“I already have someone to train me.” Nawaki states, because even if he’s aware that it’s an honour most people would jump on, he really doesn’t want to spend any more time with Jiraya than he absolutely has to, because it’s painful, it hurts, to see one where there should have been three, and he’s not ready for this, he's _not_.

“Hatake’s busy with the Uchiha, and you can’t tell me you want to spend a month going over the basics with that stuck-up,” Jiraya counters, pointing at the way Ebisu left after Jiraya interrupted them.

“I’m going to be spending a month with one of the Yondaime’s guards,” Nawaki retorts. “Shiranui-san agreed to train me for the finals if Kakashi-san decided to show blatant favouritism again.”

Jiraya’s face turns slightly grim.

“Shiranui won’t have the time, brat. Something happened, and he’s been given proctor duty for the finals. He can’t show any favouritism either. Besides,” The Sennin grins, changing the subject “You get to learn from one of the Dentetsu no Sannin! If you do well, I might even let you sign the toad contract!”

Nawaki stills at that, nods mechanically when Jiraya takes that for an agreement and tells him to meet him at training ground twenty-eight the next day before leaving, and heads home on autopilot.

* * *

Genma-san is waiting for him next to his door, takes one look at him and bundles him into his own apartment. By the time Nawaki finishes blinking, he’s sitting on Genma-san’s couch, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a steaming cup of tea in his hands.

“You back with me, kiddo?” The jounin asks gently from where he’s kneeling in front of him. “You were headed into shock when you arrived, scared me half to death.”

“Sorry,” Nawaki croaks out weakly, gripping the cup like a lifeline.

“What happened, kiddo? Ebisu told me Jiraya-sama hijacked you before you could get here, did he do something to you?” Genma-san’s tone is worried, tinged with anger directed at the Sennin.

He looks ready to tear through the village and attack the Sennin at Nawaki’s slightest word, and it’s heartwarming because few people care enough for him in this life to be willing to take his defence like this.

(It’s even more heartwarming that Genma-san  _ never _ calls him  _ Naruto _ . Not since the first time they met. The jounin is the only one who has noticed Nawaki’s flinch at the name, the way he still doesn’t consider it his own name even though it’s the name this body had been given by his parents in this life. Ever since, Genma-san had never called him Naruto again. It’s always kiddo, or kid or brat or gaki or any of the hundreds of nicknames the jounin comes up with when bored, and Nawaki relishes in it.)

Nawaki shakes his head. “He wants to train me for the month before the exams. Said you wouldn’t be able to…”

Genma-san sighed, raking a hand through his hair, for once freed from his usual bandanna. 

“The proctor from the first exam, Gekko Hayate, was attacked last night,” he tells him quietly. “No one knows what happened, and he’s in critical condition. The medics don’t know when he’ll wake up, if he ever does, and he’s in no condition to go through a Yamanaka-reading. The Hokage asked me to take over his duties as proctor and to discreetly investigate what happened to Hayate. I’m sorry, kiddo. I wanted to tell you myself.”

Nawaki nods mechanically. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asks in a whisper. “I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to be common knowledge…”

“Because I know you can keep a secret, kid.” Genma-san states simply. “That and you were the one attacked by Orochimaru during the prelims. Odds are, this is linked to him. Mitarashi confronted him in the forest after you got away and barely survived. He threatened the Hokage not to cancel the exams, so we know something’s gonna happen during the finals. Given his fascination for your teammate, odds are you’re going to find yourself in the middle of it, and trust me when I say both of your parents would come back from the grave to kill me if I didn’t at least try to give you some warning.”

Nawaki’s shock must have shown on his face, because Genma-san chuckles ruefully and ruffles his hair. 

“I know the Hokage told you about your mom, kiddo, and I know you’re smart enough to have figured out who you father was by now. And you haven’t told anyone, so I think I can trust you with this.” He takes out a couple of notebooks held together by some string. “Your parent’s fuinjutsu’s notes. I have the feeling that everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket pretty soon, and I want you to have a few aces in your sleeves.”

He looks at the clock and swears. “I need to be at the tower in ten. You can stay here tonight if you want, but I’m probably not gonna be back until early morning. As for Jiraya-sama… If you don’t want to learn from him, that’s your choice, but he’s going to be persistent and he did train your old man. But you’re smart, kiddo. Think long and hard about what you need to do this month, and tell him how it’s going to go. And if he tries to pressure you into anything, I’ll kick his ass, or at least try.”

WIth one last ruffling of Nawaki’s hair, Genma-san leaves and Nawaki is left alone with his thought.

* * *

Think long and hard about what you need to do, Genma-san had said.

Nawaki thinks of what happened in the forest, of the threats that have been made against the village and her Kage.

He thinks of Rock Lee’s dreams, crushed by Gaara’s sand along with his legs, of Hinata-chan’s frail body crumbling in her sensei’s arms after the unrestrained attacks from her cousin, of Gekko Hayate in critical condition in the hospital (Natsu’s relative, he thinks, whose body is probably already weakened from their hereditary lung disease if the way he hadn’t stopped coughing during the prelims was any indication, and he tries not to think of Natsu going through this, coughing and coughing until one day his body just stopped, and he cuts this train of thoughts before it gets too far.).

He thinks of a Konoha that doesn’t make any sense, of Oro-sensei who’s not Oro-sensei anymore, and he thinks of Jiraya trying to bond with him because of his link to his second life’s birth father, and he thinks of the offer to sign the toad contract and the feeling of outright revulsion that had risen in him at that moment.

He thinks of his sister, who lost everything and left the village that reminded her of it everyday. He thinks of his sister who raised him, who lost him and who lost her lover, who lost her grandmother and then the rest of her clan. He thinks of how much he wants her to be there, and he thinks that he has no right to barge into the life she painstakingly rebuilt for herself. He thinks of her grief and her sorrow and of the darkest blue of the ocean at its deepest.

He thinks about all of this, and then he stands up and goes to find Jiraya again.

It’s not what he wants to do, not even close to it… but it’s what he needs to do. At least for now.

<strike> (He just wants his sister.) </strike>

<strike> (He doesn't give a damn about the rest of the world.) </strike>

<strike> (He just wants Tsunade-nee.) </strike>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...  
Don't hate me too much?  
*offers more tissue boxes*  
So, what did you think?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s no one watching when he steps into the woods, his hand running along the bark as the chakra within the trees resonate ever so slightly with his own. He had never shown a hint of a Mokuton ability in either of his lives, but the chakra here is familiar, and it swirls around his own as if welcoming him home. His feet lead him to a crater of sorts, at the bottom of which two bodies rest, covered in seals.
> 
> The Sandaime had managed to incapacitate the First and Second, Jiraya had said. Not gotten rid of, incapacitate.
> 
> Nawaki’s breath hitches as he recognizes the silver hair of his great-uncle, the long dark strands of the grandfather he never got to meet, and he cannot stop his knees from buckling even as he races to the bottom of the crater.
> 
> The two Hokage are paralysed from the waist down, at least from what Nawaki can understand from the seals on them, and their hands are missing, preventing them from making any hand signs. There’s no blood. Their body seem to be made of ash and paper, and when Nawaki comes to a stop in front of them, it becomes clear that they are still conscious because Tobirama-oji’s head snaps up to look at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently on track with Nanowrimo and I managed to get some work done on this chapter as well, so here you go! The Chunin Exams finals are upon us, and so is the Invasion!
> 
> Fair warning, more angst incoming! But also hugs! Multiple hugs even! That has to count for something, right? Right?
> 
> ...
> 
> Yeah, no, this is still definitely a bring your own tissues chapter. Probably at least as much as chapter 3, if not more. Sorry not sorry :P
> 
> Usual warnings apply: Angst, Feels, Canon-typical violence, Grief
> 
> Also I'm so happy everyone is loving Mother-hen Genma hahaha, he's so fun to write and Nawaki deserves at least one competent adult taking care of him.

His month of training with Jiraya is… awkward, to say the least. 

Jiraya tests him the first day, makes him demonstrate his chakra control and the jutsus he already knows. The water jutsus make him smile and mutter something about Nawaki being his mother’s son, and his taijutsu makes him raise an eyebrow in surprise when they spar the first evening.

Of course he would recognize the Uzushio style Nawaki is using, the boy mentally swears, remembering too late that the man had known Mito-baachan and Kushina-san, had probably seen them fight at some point. But the Sennin buys his excuse of having learned it from a scroll (which is a lie, but Nawaki doesn’t think Jiraya will check his story, and Mito-baachan’s journals do have some taijutsu tricks in them so it’s not  _ entirely  _ a lie.) and doesn’t dig further.

Much to Nawaki’s surprise, Jiraya actually has something he wants to teach him other than summoning toads, which he thankfully agreed to keep for last.

(There is  _ no way in the seven hells _ that Nawaki is signing  _ that _ particular contract. He had been promised the snake contract, and if he can’t have that one, the only ones he would be willing to even  _ consider _ would be Tsunade-nee’s slugs or Sakumo-san’s wolves.)

(He still doesn’t know what happened to them. Kakashi-san summons dogs, not the wolves his father had been renowned for, and Nawaki wonders if that means that their contract was lost. He hopes not, remembers the fierce pack that tore into enemy shinobis with a single word from Sakumo-san, remembers the times the man had brought them out to play with Nawaki’s team after a particularly harsh mission and how gentle the wolves had been.)

(There is  _ no way _ Nawaki will sign the toad contract.)

(No fucking way.)

But the Sennin tells him about the Yondaime’s famed jutsu instead, the Rasengan, and gives him the different steps to learn it.

He’s already a better teacher than Kakashi-san, and so far all he has done is give him a series of instructions and tell him to get to it.

(Nawaki still misses Oro-sensei like hell, and there’s no way he’ll ever call Jiraya ‘sensei’, but maybe he can tolerate the man for now.)

* * *

The rasengan, Nawaki decides after the twenty-seventh time a rubber ball dies in his hands, is a pain in the ass to learn, and Jiraya is not helpful, telling him he needs to figure it out for himself. At least it’s something he can practice while talking and asking Jiraya questions about the other famous jutsu of the Yondaime, the Hiraishin (which, from what he had learned in history class, sounds like it’s based on his great-uncle Tobirama’s teleportation jutsu, and Nawaki has been wanting to learn that particular jutsu since he was  _ five _ the first time around, okay, so any information he can glean on it is something he’ll gleefully take in). Of course, Jiraya refuses to give him the formula needed, but the discussion on seals that devolves from Nawaki’s questions about the Hiraishin is both interesting and informative, and he once again surprises the man with the depth of his knowledge on the subject.

Nawaki wants to snort when Jiraya compliments him on it, because his knowledge of sealing is pathetic compared to what it could have been, should have been if he hadn’t died the first time around or lost his mother and his clan the second time around. What he knows are seals that every Uzushio child learns at their mother’s knees, little tricks and cantrips and the basics of storage seals and flashtags and explosives tags, a few wards to keep your siblings from getting their hands on your stuff and some to extract salt from water in order to make it drinkable, a necessity on an island village surrounded by the sea. He remembers the seals his older cousins could draw as effortlessly as breathing, the perception filters and the medical seals and the strong barriers that could take the full brunt impact of a charging summon and not even shake, the tracking seals that parents used to keep track of wandering children. He remembers Mito-baachan creating a seal in the middle of one of the most fierce battle ever, a seal strong enough to drag the strongest of the bijuu into her body and  _ keep it there _ .

Nawaki has barely even started to scratch the surface of what fuinjutsu means to an Uzumaki, and here Jiraya is talking to him as if he were some kind of prodigy. He’s not, he never has been.

Tsunade is one, she had taken to chakra like a fish to water as a child, flying through the ranks and basically creating half of the medical ninjutsu still used today. Namikaze Minato, Nawaki’s current body’s father, had been one when it came to fuinjutsu, reinventing most of the discipline after Uzushio was lost, with help from Nawaki’s birth mother, Uzumaki Kushina. Mito-baachan had been one, phenomenally good at seals even for a main branch Uzumaki. Hashirama-jiji, from what Nawaki had gathered from the stories, had been more on the idiot savant scale, while Tobirama-oji had had both the smarts and the work ethics to make it  _ look like _ he was a prodigy.

(Well, he had been one. For anything that didn’t have to do with human interaction, at least.)

(Nawaki had loved Tobirama-oji, but even he had to admit that his great-uncle could not people well. Crowds, he could handle, wrapping them around his little finger with no effort, but actual  _ individuals _ ? That Tobirama-oji actually  _ cared  _ for? That was another thing altogether.)

(Seeing him and Kagami-oki interact and try to hide their feelings for each other?)

( _ Hilarious _ . And  _ painful _ .)

(Mito-baachan used to call him an awkward turtle-duck, in reference to some of the animals native to Uzushio, and, after seeing one for the first time, Nawaki had had to admit that it fit his great-uncle stupidly well.)

(Mito-baachan was also the one who ended up locking Tobirama-oji and Kagami-oji in a sealed cupboard when she got fed up with their antics, because she was the only one who could get away with it.)

Nawaki knows he’s not a prodigy, that he’s not exceptionally smart or talented. But he’s also stubborn and observant, a doer more than a learner, and he’ll practice until he crumbles of exhaustion before giving up on learning something, be it a new jutsu or fuinjutsu or a new kata.

He’s also people smart, and has the advantages of having already lived another (admittedly pretty short) life before this one, one that took place in the second great shinobi war where you either got good or you got dead. 

<strike> (And, obviously, Nawaki hadn’t gotten good enough fast enough, so he had gotten dead instead, and he’s determined not to make that mistake again.) </strike>

* * *

He trains and he trains and he trains, and he has the first two steps of the Rasengan down, though he still struggles with the last one. So he puts it aside for now, concentrates on his seals and taijutsu and ninjutsu, with some fuinjutsu thrown in, and Jiraya is not as useless a teacher as Kakashi usually is, which makes for a nice change. The man even has him test his chakra affinities, and it doesn’t surprise Nawaki when the paper turns soaking wet between his fingers.

The minor fuuton affinity? That is a surprise, though, because wind is a pretty rare affinity in Konoha and Fire country. But it will definitely be a nice addition to his jutsu repertory, Nawaki thinks, blinking tears away as he remembers reading about how his cousin Arashi had become a force to be reckoned by combining the same affinities to create gigantic storms.

(He’ll never be as good as Arashi had been with that but… He will try.)

(It’s the best way to honour his cousin.)

(Arashi would be proud, he hopes.)

(Actually, Arashi would probably be laughing his ass off if he could see Nawaki’s pathetic attempts at combining water and wind, and that’s even better.)

* * *

The third phase of the chunin exam arrives, and Nawaki makes his way to the arena early that morning. Still, he is one of the last to show up. Only Sasuke and the Oto genin are missing. With a sigh, he goes to stand next to Shikamaru and Shino. His is the first match, and he cannot wait to pound Neji’s face in.

Genma-san is the proctor, and the man spares him a quick grin before announcing the start of the tournament. Sasuke is still missing, and Nawaki frowns when Genma-san announces that the Sound Genin has dropped out. But then it’s time for his match and he focuses on his opponent.

To no one’s surprise, the Hyuuga starts the match by monologuing about fate, and Nawaki dearly wants to hurt him for his sheer stupidity. Seriously, what is it with genins these days? Monologuing in the middle of a battle is something you only get to do when you outpower the enemies so much is not even funny anymore, and even then it’s still pretty risky! Your opponent only needs to be lucky  _ once _ , and leaving yourself open like that is _St_ _ upid! _

A well placed water jutsu stops the Hyuuga’s rambling mid-sentence. The wind jutsu that follows is enough to unbalance him slightly, and Nawaki pounces. The Uzumaki taijutsu is brash and unrefined, like its practitioners had been, and fits in more in bar brawls than in dojos, but it’s fast and vicious, and Nawaki gets a few punches in before his opponent regains his bearings. The Kaiten is unexpected, but doesn’t stop him.

_ (You are shinobis _ , Oro-sensei had told them the first day they had met as a team.  _ And we are at war. No tactic is unfair as long as you’re alive by the end of the fight.) _

The Hyuuga pride themselves on their precious Byakugan, but a well placed flashbomb has Neji clawing at his eyes in pain. By the time he’s able to blink again, the Hyuuga prodigy is face-first on the ground, Nawaki on his back with a kunai to his neck and the fingers of his other hand digging into one of the most painful pressure points.

“Winner, Uzumaki Naruto!” Genma-san announces with a grin, and an apologetic look at having to use the Name.

He won. 

He won, and the crowds are cheering, cheering for _him_, and yet all he feels is hollow.

* * *

The Suna puppeteer forfeits rather than face Shino, and Sasuke’s match is moved when it becomes obvious that the boy is not going to make it here on time.

Another black mark against the Uchiha, and against Kakashi, whose responsibility it was to bring the genin to the arena.

Nawaki sighs. Of course they’re not going to disqualify the last Uchiha, even if that would have been the fate of any other shinobi not showing up on time for their fight. Genma-san looks displeased, but orders are orders and he announces Shikamaru’s fight against the Suna kunoichi, Temari, instead.

Shikamaru, Nawaki remembers, is scarily intelligent. He plays the girl like a puppet, and when he could have won the match he forfeits instead, showing a good appreciation of his own chakra reserves. He will probably get promoted despite only fighting one match, Nawaki muses, if only because the chances of getting him to take the exam a second time are slim to nil.

_ Naras _ .

Just as Genma-san looks ready to disqualify Sasuke, Hokage’s order be damned, Kakashi shows up in the middle of the arena, Uchiha in tow.

“I hope we’re not late?” Sakumo-san’s son has the guts to ask.

<strike> (Is there really no way for Nawaki to trade him back for the older model? No way at all?) </strike>

Genma-san looks ready to gut him then and there, but professionalism wins out and he announces the last match of the first round instead.

_ Uchiha Sasuke vs Sabaku no Gaara _ .

This… is not going to end well, Nawaki thinks blankly as he watches Sasuke pierce the sand armour with the Chidori - _ lightning jutsu, only original jutsu created by Hatake Kakashi, would be an assassination jutsu if not for the noise it makes, hard to control if you don’t have a sharingan _ Nawaki remembers from Uzumaki Kushina’s journals. Now he knows what Kakashi has been teaching Sasuke during the break. But seriously? An A-rank personal assassination technique? To a  _ genin? _ What had Kakashi been  _ thinking? _ Hell, had he been thinking at  _ all _ ?

Gaara goes nuts as his blood flows for the first time in his life, and suddenly there’s a jinchuuriki in mid-transformation in the middle of the arena and Nawaki wants to punch whoever is in charge of his destiny because WHAT THE HELL? Seriously? A rampaging jinchuuriki? On top of all the other bullshit he’s had to deal with in the past couple of months?  _ Really? _

* * *

Of course Kakashi sends him in pursuit of the crazy jinchuuriki with nothing but a couple of genin as backup. _Of fucking course. _Mostly because Sasuke is already pursuing him, and someone needs to make sure that the last Uchiha doesn’t get himself killed. Did the boy get his common sense surgically removed at birth or something? Did  _ Kakashi? _ Sending  _ genins  _ after a mad jinchuuriki,  _ seriously _ ?

Nawaki officially hates his life right now.

* * *

(Log, Nawaki misses his team. And Sakumo-san. He would give his left hand to have one of them by his side right now.)

(He studiously avoids thinking about his sensei, because he can’t afford to, not when he can feel the man’s chakra in the Kage’s box, fighting against the Sandaime.)

* * *

Nawaki sends hundreds of clones through the village as he runs after the sand trio, determined to at least try to help the village if he can. They might not like him much, and this Konoha might not make sense to him, but it's still _Konoha, _still the village his grandfather had founded, and Nawaki will not stand iddle.

* * *

Fighting Gaara is… hard. The boy is a reflection of some of his darker thoughts, and Nawaki wonders. Is this what he would have become, had he not remembered his past life? Had he not had Genma-san, and the Ichirakus, and Iruka-sensei, and the Sandaime, to a degree? It’s not a nice thought, and he buries it inside him even as he faces the transforming jinchuuriki.

Which is bad idea, because the transformation is nearly finished and it’s huge. As in, taller than the Hokage Tower huge. And Nawaki has never been the tallest kid around, in either life. He gulps. But Sakura is unconscious and Sasuke looks close to joining her, and Gaara-as-Shukaku is clearly the biggest threat around, and Nawaki is the only one standing between his teammates and the beast.

What the hell had Kakashi been thinking when he sent _genins_ against a psychotic jinchuuriki?! Sakumo-san had never been so unreasonable!

(Well, not about the safety of others. His own, however, had been a different story altogether, and Nawaki is _not_ going to think about that right now.)

This is the moment a summoning contract would come in handy, Nawaki thinks, for all that he would hate to contract the toads. But it’s not something he currently has in his arsenal, and he swears a blue streak as he evades the sand arm headed straight for him. He can’t afford the distraction right now. Instead, he focuses on the seal, barely visible, linking bijuu and jinchuuriki. He ignores the flares of faintly familiar chakra coming from the village, swirling water and strong wood singing briefly to the sky before disappearing under Orochimaru’s chakra signature, and Nawaki forces himself not to think about what that means and looks at the seal instead. 

It’s an insult to all decent sealmasters around, even Nawaki, who considers himself at apprentice level at most, can see it. There are next to no safeguards, and the damn thing is actually designed to have the bijuu take control if it’s jinchuuriki loses consciousness! Nawaki really, really wants to kill whoever made that seal, because they never heard of the Ichibi getting loose the way the Kyuubi had, which meant Suna had the change in container planned well in advance, and could have  _ definitely  _ taken the time to design a better seal.

_ Assholes, arrogant amateurs! _

The only good thing about it is that it will be easy (for a given definition of the word) for Nawaki to tamper with it. So he takes a deep breathe, summons a small army of clones to distract his opponent and takes his ink and brush out of his pouch. 

He’ll only have one shot at this, he thinks as he unrolls his stack of paper sheets. He can’t afford to mess it up.

* * *

It works. It’s not perfect, and he doesn’t manage to permanently change Gaara’s seal, but his seal paralyses the sand monster long enough for Nawaki to wake the jinchuuriki up, and has the added benefit of working off Gaara’s own chakra, meaning that even as the sand dissolves and the boy remains, the seal still works, keeping the redhead still. Nawaki drags the boy back to Konoha, while his siblings have been arrested by Sarutobi Asuma and Aburame Shibi, who had come to their student/son’s rescue.

(Nawaki’s clones drop Sasuke and Sakura at the hospital and dispel themselves before they wake up. He is in no mood to deal with them right now.)

* * *

Meanwhile, the real Nawaki goes looking for Jiraya after leaving Gaara in Ibiki’s care at T&I. He finds the Sennin crouched by the Sandaime’s side as ANBU medics work frantically on the old man, and Nawaki stills. 

Much as he’s wary of Sarutobi Hiruzen, much as he has been reluctant to trust him with his secrets and has his reservations about the way he handled quite a lot of things, the Hokage remains one of his precious persons, one of the few people in this life who care about him, and to see him in this state…

“Will he be alright?” the whisper escapes him before he can stop the words, and Jiraya startles as he notices Nawaki’s presence for the first time.

“I don’t know,” the man answers honestly, and Nawaki is grateful, oh so grateful that the sennin has the decency not to lie to him about this. “The medics are doing their best, but…” He runs a hand through white hair spotted with blood. “This battle… Sensei is not exactly young anymore, and Orochimaru had been his favourite student. Having to fight him again broke his heart… And then the snake went further and summoned the dead to fight for him.”

“The dead…?” Nawaki trails off, remembering the fight that had rocked the Senju mansion for days, Mito-baachan and Kagami-oji against Tobirama-oji. They had been livid, he remembers, railing against the second Hokage about the new jutsu he had come up with, Edo Tensei. And he remembers the two chakra flares that he had felt during his fight with Gaara, water and wood, and his heart tighten with pain and hurt and betrayal.

No. He couldn’t have... Oro-sensei wouldn't...

“The previous Kages” Jiraya sighs, standing up and motioning for Nawaki to follow him some steps away, so as to not interfere with the medics.

He had. Oro-sens-... Orochimaru had summoned the previous Hokages from the Pure Lands to fight for him. Nawaki feels faint.

“Thank the log that Sensei managed to prevent Minato’s resurrection,” the Sennin continues, oblivious to Nawaki’s turmoil, “but fighting against his own teachers took quite a lot out of him. By the time we managed to get through the barrier Orochimaru’s followers had set up, Sensei was badly hurt, though he had managed to incapacitate the First and Second, and was in the process of fighting against Orochimaru in the earnest. We managed to head him off, and he left the village when it became clear that his side was lost, but…”

Nawaki gulps, eyes fixed on the too still form of the man he calls jiji, of the man who tried his hardest to take care of him despite the circumstances.

“Gaara’s the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi” He says instead, reporting on the fight that just happened. “I managed to come up with a seal that paralysed him and brought him back to his human form. He’s in a cell at T&I, but I would feel better if you could take a look at his seal as soon as possible.”

“That bad?”

“Not a single safeguard between his mind and the demon’s” Nawaki says flatly. 

“I’ll go and look at him as soon as the medics are done with Sensei” Jiraya sighs. “I’m Acting-Hokage for the moment, so this responsibility would be falling to me even if I wasn’t the only decent sealmaster around. Good job with Gaara, remind me to kick Hatake’s ass for sending genins to deal with him. Get some rest, brat, you deserve it. You’ll probably get a field promotion out of this if I can wing it.”

He leaves after that, following the medics who are ready to bring the Sandaime to the hospital, and Nawaki remains, alone, on what is left of the battlefield. There’s something tingling at the edge of his mind, a fleeting, familiar feeling and he looks towards the woods created by his once grandfather.

* * *

There’s no one watching when he steps into the woods, his hand running along the bark as the chakra within the trees resonate ever so slightly with his own. He had never shown a hint of a Mokuton ability in either of his lives, but the chakra here is familiar, and it swirls around his own as if welcoming him home. His feet lead him to a crater of sorts, at the bottom of which two bodies rest, covered in seals.

_ The Sandaime had managed to incapacitate the First and Second _ , Jiraya had said. Not  _ gotten rid of _ , incapacitate.

Nawaki’s breath hitches as he recognizes the silver hair of his great-uncle, the long dark strands of the grandfather he never got to meet, and he cannot stop his knees from buckling even as he races to the bottom of the crater.

The two Hokage are paralysed from the waist down, at least from what Nawaki can understand from the seals on them, and their hands are missing, preventing them from making any hand signs. There’s no blood. Their body seem to be made of ash and paper, and when Nawaki comes to a stop in front of them, it becomes clear that they are still conscious because Tobirama-oji’s head snaps up to look at him.

Nawaki freezes, because his great-uncle’s eyes have always been striking and it’s been nearly twenty years, for him, since the man’s escort came back without him, Sarutobi Hiruzen just named Sandaime, tear tracks on Koharu-oba’s normally unreadable face and Kagami-oji knocked out on Torifu-oji’s shoulder because the Uchiha had been trying desperately to go back for Tobirama.

“Who are you?” The first Hokage, his famous grandfather, asks him curiously, but Nawaki is still frozen like a deer in front of a lightning jutsu in Tobirama’s gaze.

He doesn’t know why he rushed down here, why he had to come and see them with his own eyes.

(He knows, of course he knows. He’s _scared_ and _lonely_ and _desperate_, and Tobirama-oji had always been the one who reassured him with cold hard logic whenever Mito-baachan’s comforting approach hadn’t worked. Tobirama-oji is familiar, is safe in a world which is neither, and Nawaki's chakra is reaching for his before he can stop himself.)

He doesn’t speak, can’t utter a word, too scared to break the moment, to have Tobirama-oji repeat the question, to have Tobirama-oji look at him as if he were a stranger, even as he knows that this is what will happen, because if Oro-sensei couldn't recognize him, what are the odds that his great-uncle, who's been dead for decades, would?   
  
Apparently, it's a good thing that Nawaki didn't inherit his grandfather's gambling habit, because the first word out of the second Hokage's mouth is his name.   


* * *

His name. 

His actual name.

The one no one has called him by since just before his death the first time around.

* * *

<strike> (An anguished scream, his sensei and teammates’ agony palpable in their voice as the world exploded in fire and pain) </strike>   


* * *

"Nawaki?"   
  
A dam breaks, and Nawaki is crying even as he flings himself at the silver haired man, who catches him without missing a beat, his stumped limbs coming around his back to hold him close.   
  
They both ignore the handless flailing of the first Hokage next to them. Tobirama-oji is cold, and Nawaki can't hear or feel his heartbeat, and he knows it's only a reanimated corpse, that it's not even his great uncle's original body, but it's his  _ soul _ , and Nawaki will take what he can get in this world that doesn't make sense. He buries his head in the man's chest and clings to his shirt with all his might, afraid that he'll disappear if he lets go (and Nawaki knows he will, knows that the summoning won't last much longer, their feet are already starting to crumble, and he'll take whatever he can get until he does because he is not ready to say goodbye again, hadn't been ready the first time around either).   
  
"Nawaki?" A question, a gentle rebuke, a silent message to calm down and explain what had happened. Tobirama-oji had used that tone so many times when Nawaki had been a kid, to get the full story out of him after something had upset him, that it's a reflex on Nawaki's part to take a deep breathe and unclench his hands from the fabric in order to wipe the tears away. He doesn't move, though, remains curled on the man's lap, and Tobirama-oji thankfully doesn't force him to move, instead keeping his maimed arms wrapped around Nawaki's shoulders.

“Tobi! What is happening?!” The first Hokage complains.

“Brother. Shut up.” Tobirama-oji says coldly, focused on the boy in his arms. “Nawaki. What happened?”

“How did you know it was me?” Nawaki hiccups instead of replying.

“I would recognise you anywhere, silly child,” Tobirama-oji chastises him gently. “Not even reincarnation will change that.”

“Oro-sensei didn’t.”

A grimace.

“Aaa. Saru’s student, the one who summoned us?”

“He wasn’t always like that, Tobirama-oji!” Nawaki is quick to try and defend his old sensei. “He… after I… He changed. Tsunade-nee and Jiraya weren’t there. Tsunade-nee left, Tobirama-oji. After I… after I died, Dan died too, her fiancé, and she couldn’t take it. And Jiraya was away because he was Konoha’s spymaster, and the Sandaime was busy because of the wars, and sensei… my entire team died within three years of each other. From what I gathered, Oro-sensei lost it after that. He left the village twenty years ago.”

“Tsunade-nee? You’re little Tsunade-chan’s brother?”

“Brother, for the love of log, keep your mouth shut!” Tobirama-oji growled. “Nawaki. What happened to your sensei wasn’t your fault, no matter what you might be thinking. I know it’s hard, but you need to focus on the facts right now. How is Saru?”

“Bad. After he dealt with you he fought Oro-sen… Orochimaru. By the time Jiraya and the ANBU got to him, he was badly hurt, though he gave as good as he got apparently. He was still unconscious when the medic took him to the hospital, though they seemed to say that he would live. But he’s old, Tobirama-oji. Real old. They… they don’t know if he’ll wake up, or what state he’ll be in if he does…”

“Saru is stronger than he looks, Nawaki. He’ll pull through,” Tobirama-oji assures him, and Nawaki wants to believe him, he really does, but Hokage-jiji had looked so  _ old _ , so  _ weak... _ “You said Tsunade had left the village?”

“Yeah. No one knows where she is right now, but I think Jiraya has at least some ideas of where to start looking,” Nawaki admits. He’s been tempted to ask the man, so many times, but he hasn’t dared, too afraid of what he might find out.

“What about my team ?”

“Koharu-oba, Homura-oji and Creepy-Danzo are the Hokage’s councillors” Nawaki answers hesitantly, and Tobirama-oji notices immediately.

“Not Kagami or Torifu?”

Nawaki gulps. “Torifu-oji died when the Kyuubi escaped from my mother in this life during my birth. Kagami-oji…” He takes a deep breath. “The thirteen-years old prodigy and heir of the Uchiha clan slaughtered his entire clan five years ago, with the exception of his little brother, who is now on my team. I’m sorry, Tobirama-oji” he adds quietly, because he knows how close the two of them had been, despite all the rumors that the Second Hokage had loathed the Uchiha clan as a whole, had seen how Tobirama’s death had affected the Uchiha, how his grandmother had practically dragged the man to the Senju compound and forced him to live with them until she was sure he wasn’t going to do anything stupid.

* * *

(Kagami-oji had always looked so terribly  _ sad _ , whenever Nawaki had walked past the Uchiha compound as a child. He had been so tempted to walk up to him, to tell him who he was, but had never managed to find the courage to do so before it was too late.)

(It’s one of the things Nawaki regrets the most.)

( _ Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.' _ , a poet had said once.)

(Nawaki will never know what might have happened if he had told Kagami-oji the truth.)

(It hurts.)

* * *

Tobirama-oji’s breath hitches, nearly imperceptible, before he replies.

“It might… be better that way” He admits quietly. “Kagami would have hated this. He was… quite vocal about his opinion on the Edo Tensei.”

Yes, he had been, Nawaki remembers with a wince. The screams had shaken the Hokage’s tower when the Uchiha had found out about the resurrection jutsu. Kagami-oji had _not_ been happy about it.

A slight noise catches his attention, and his eyes widen when he sees that the crumbling has now reached the Kage’s knees.

“Tobirama-oji…” He whispers brokenly, not ready for him to disappear, not ready to grieve for his uncle again, not ready to be alone again.

“It’ll be okay, Nawaki.” Tobirama-oji hugs him closer for a brief moment, before letting go of him. “But I don’t want you to watch this.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Nawaki sobs, clinging to the older man. “I can’t do this, Tobirama-oji, I _can’t_, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do and nothing makes sense!”

“You can and you will,” Tobirama-oji says firmly, but gently. “Find Tsunade. Stick with her, no matter what. She’s your sister, Nawaki, she’ll take care of you.”   


Nawaki freezes at that, because he's thought about this, of course he has, of course he has wanted to go and look for his sister, for the only anchor he has left in this world where nothing makes sense anymore, but he's never gone through with it. Because he doesn't want to barge into her life and turn it upside down, because she's already grieved for him and he won't reopen these wounds.   


(Because he doesn't know what he will do if she looks at him and sees a stranger. Because he can take a lot of things, can take Oro-sensei going off the deep end and not recognising him, can take being reincarnated thirty years in the future where most of the people he cares about are dead, can take being the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi, but he's not sure he can take his sister turning him away.)

(It would  _ break _ him.)   


"Tobirama-oji... I can't... I ..."

“You can and you will, Nawaki. I have faith in you. I know you can do this.” A pause, and Tobirama-oji presses him closer and softly kisses his forehead. “I love you, silly child,” he whispers. “Never doubt that.”

One last hug, a tendril of chakra wrapping itself around his, then Tobirama-oji pushes him away, towards Hashirama who has been suspiciously silent since his last rebuke.

Still sobbing, Nawaki goes to hug the grandfather he’s never got the chance to meet in his previous life, and the Shodaime Hokage returns his embrace with surprising strength.

“Tell your sister to get her act together, and that we love her, okay?” The man says, surprisingly serious. “And know that we love you too, Nawaki, even if I didn’t get to meet you during my life. I’m very proud of you.”

Nawaki nods, tears still streaming down his face.

“I don’t know what the Pure Lands are like, but if you see them, tell my teammates that I miss them? And kaachan and touchan and Mito-baachan, and Sakumo-san?”

“We will.” Tobirama-oji promises.

“Kagami-oji and Torifu-oji too?” Nawaki adds, desperatly trying to stall for time.

“We’ll tell everyone, Nawaki. Now go,” Tobirama-oji urges him softly. “You don’t need to see this.”

Nawaki steels himself, wipes his tears away angrily, and takes one last look at his ancestors. He bows, the deepest bow he has ever given anyone, and then he turns around and walks away. He doesn’t stop until he feels their chakra signatures disappear completely, and it’s only when they have that he breaks down on the forest’s floor.

* * *

Nawaki drags himself back to his apartment that night, the building having miraculously survived the damage of the invasion, and he carefully puts two little urns on the small altar that is steadily getting crowded. One is blue and silver, the other green and brown, and both have the Senju's clan symbol meticulously painted on the top.   
  
A handful of ashes a piece is all that remained of his forefathers once the Edo Tensei released them to the Pure Lands, and Nawaki knows that the ashes are not really from their original bodies, but that doesn't stop him from needing the memento to remember them by. He lights the incense that night and prays, prays for the safe travel of the Senju brothers' souls on their way back to the pure world, prays for the Sandaime who lies unconscious in the hospital in a medically induced coma that the doctors are not sure they will be able to bring him back from, prays for all the souls who perished during the invasions and all the people who were injured.   
  


* * *

He is still praying, hours later, when Genma-san comes to check up on him, hugging him tightly before collapsing on Nawaki's couch, too exhausted to even try to make it back to his own apartment, and Nawaki covers him with a light blanket after discreetly checking him over for any injuries the stubborn tokujo might have tried to hide from the medics.   


(For all that Genma-san is a mother-hen, he is surprisingly bad at taking care of himself.)   
  
Nawaki doesn't sleep that night, doesn't even try to. Instead he kneels in front of the altar and, for once, allows himself to remember them. To remember the way Nanao-chan smiled. The focused frown on Natsu's brow when he was trying to master one of his clan's signature move. Dan's laughter as he ruffled Nawaki's and Shizune's hair. Mito-baachan's hugs. Tobirama-oji's little gestures, pats on the head, a firm press on a shoulder that conveyed the love he did not know how to put in words. Kaachan's scent. Touchan's eyes that shone with mirth every time Nawaki pranked his sister. Kagami-oji’s genjutsu enhanced bedtime stories. Toka-oba’s relentless training, and the dango she would buy him afterwards.

* * *

When morning comes, he stands up and leaves to look for Jiraya.

He has never disobeyed his great-uncle before, and he doesn’t intend to start now.

(He doesn’t want to have to add a memento for Tsunade-nee on his altar one day, and have to wonder about the might have beens.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hands out more tissue boxes*
> 
> Seriously guys, I warned you :p
> 
> Hope you liked it <3 feel free to let me know what you thought of it, or to yell at me for making you cry and giving you feels ;)
> 
> The quote mentionned in this chapter is by John Greenleaf Whittier — 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'
> 
> Also, I have a discord! It's mostly for my One Piece fics, but there's also a channel for this fic if anyone is interested!
> 
> https :// discord .gg /xre VUA2 (just take out the spaces)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of fucking course they come after him. It would have been too much to hope that they were there for Jiraya, after all. But no. The shark-guy (Kisame, apparently, and oh, that rings a bell that Nawaki would prefer remained unrung, Kiri missing-nin Hoshigaki Kisame, wielder of Samehada, one of the Seven Swords, just like Zabuza had wielded Kubikiribocho, because of course Nawaki can’t just have normal missing-nins after him, he has to have fucking S-ranks, how is this his life?) makes it clear that they’re after him, or rather after the Kyuubi, and if Nawaki wasn’t already pissed off at the guy for being from fucking Kiri and trying to kill him, he would be even more.
> 
> If they want to kill him so badly, it should at least be for something he has actually done, not for the demon shoved into his stomach without so much as a by your leave before he was even an hour old! Assholes!
> 
> They don’t give a fuck about collateral damage either, how nice. Not. Those houses belong to actual people. Civilians. Some of whom are still inside the fucking building that the Uchiha just set on fucking fire.
> 
> Pyros, all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nanowrimo is kicking my ass when it comes to my novel, so I decided to work on some other stuff as well to reach my word count. And this chapter was one of them, so here you go! It's a bit shorter than usual, but that's because this was the best place to cut it ;)
> 
> On the menu today, Nawaki trolling Jiraya, an encounter with Akatsuki, Sasuke being an idiot, and an all-important meeting...
> 
> Also featuring: idiots with a grudge who should really learn when not to charge in, some houses who did not ask to be collateral damage, but ended up becoming so anyway, and FEELS because this is me we're talking about here
> 
> But hey, at least some of them are happy feels! that has to count for something! And there will be hugs! (And tears, admittedly, but HUGS)
> 
> (Yeah, better keep the tissues on hand for this as well xD)

As it turns out, Jiraya has been looking for him too. The councillors have asked him to bring Tsunade back to Konoha, he says. With all the injured, including Sandaime-jiji, a medic of her caliber would be invaluable.

(What he doesn’t say is that they want her to be the Godaime since it has become obvious that Sarutobi Hiruzen’s health will not allow him to keep the hat much longer. They’ve offered Jiraya the position, Nawaki knows from one of the clones that had been leftover after the invasion, but the Toad Sennin can’t accept it, won’t accept it, for all that it was once his dream.)

(Nawaki doesn’t know the details, but Jiraya loves Konoha, maybe too much. He always has and always will, but he knows he serves her better from the roads and the shadows, being her ears and eyes across the continent. He would make a terrible Hokage, Jiraya knows himself well enough to say that, because he cares too much, always has, and has never been able to send his precious people to their death. Orochimaru had the opposite problem, had too often been unable to look at a situation through anything other than a scientific interest, especially after losing his first genin team. For all that she left because of the loss of her precious people, Tsunade has always been better at this than her teammates ever will be, her medical training having honed her ability to prioritize and sometimes sacrifice a part to save the whole, and also her ability to never forget that her patients are people too.)

Tsunade needs to come home, Jiraya says, even if it is only for a short time to heal the many injured.

Nawaki nods and asks when they are leaving, and pretends he isn’t about to fall apart.

* * *

They leave that very day. Nawaki leaves a note for Genma-san, who has been working non-stop since that night, to thank him for his help and advice, and then they’re off.

The trip goes… as well as it probably can, to be honest. Nawaki isn’t exactly enthused to be spending more time with a man who looks at him and sees the Yondaime, especially when Nawaki looks at him and sees the two empty spaces on either side of him. The discussions about seals are interesting at least, even if the asshole _ still _ won’t give him anything useful regarding the Hiraishin. The damn thing is his legacy twice over, for log’s sake! If anyone deserves to learn it, it’s him!

Jiraya is also a _ pervert _, and Nawaki makes it his life mission to prevent him from getting any. If it distracts him from thinking about how his sister might react to seeing them, well. That’s for him to know and no one else to suspect.

(Besides, Tsunade would be _ proud _ of him for cockblocking the idiot. She certainly used to buy him sweets as a kid when he interrupted Jiraya’s attempts at flirting.)

(He does know, from days long past, that Jiraya uses his flirting as a cover for meeting with his contacts for his spy network, but Nawaki draws a firm line at underage women, civilian and kunoichi alike. No. Over his dead body.)

It also has the added benefits of making the idiot threaten to withhold the Toad summoning contract from him if he doesn’t cut it out, which is exactly what Nawaki had been looking for, so joke’s on Jiraya, Nawaki’s not stopping anytime soon.

* * *

Jiraya drops him in a room at the inn they’re staying in for the night, and gives him strict instructions not to bother him. He also tries to make of with Nawaki’s wallet, but Nawaki’s anti-theft seal does its work just fine, and the Sennin leaves the room cursing and nursing an electrocuted hand.

Idiot shouldn’t have tried to steal from him.

With a sigh, Nawaki leans his head back against the wall, sitting on his unrolled futon. They’re moving slower than he had expected, Jiraya taking his time in every village, asking for information on Tsunade and many other things. Part of him is chafing at the slow pace, but mostly he’s kind of guiltily relieved by it.

He really, really doesn’t know what to do.

He agreed to go and look for Tsunade-nee, because Tobirama-oji had told him to, because the village needs her, because Hokage-jiji needs a decent healer, because _ Nawaki _ needs her, but…

Will she even recognise him? How would she? Tobirama-oji did, but Tobirama-oji had been _ dead _, it might have been because of that that he was able to recognise Nawaki’s soul in this new body. Oro-sensei certainly hadn’t, and neither had Hokage-jiji, Jiraya, or any of the others Nawaki had come across in this second life.

And if she doesn’t, it will break him how can he tell her? Why would she even believe him? He’s been dead for over thirty years now, what right does he have to barge into her life again?

* * *

(He could live with that, maybe, with her close by and her chakra lingering in the village and her presence everywhere)

<strike> ( No. He couldn’t. Not if she doesn’t recognise him. His heart has already taken too many hits, too many cuts, and this would be the thing that would end him.) </strike>

<strike> (If Tsunade-nee looks at him and sees a stranger…) </strike>

<strike> (Well.) </strike>

<strike> (Nawaki can only hope that the seal keeping the Kyuubi inside him has a fail safe in case the jinchuuriki doesn’t make it.) </strike>

<strike> (Because he doesn’t think he’ll survive this. ) </strike>

* * *

He’s halfway through working himself into another anxiety attack - his eight since leaving Tobirama-oji and Hashirama-jiji to dissolve into ashes once more - when there’s a knock on the door.

The chakra signatures on the other side are _ huge _. And very much not Jiraya’s. The biggest one is about level with the Ichibi, but is not demonic in the slightest, and suiton-tinted. The other one is comparatively lower, but still in the high jonin range if not quite Kage, and their element is fire. Actually that chakra is very Uchiha, and familiar in a way that reminds Nawaki of one of the ANBU who used to keep an eye on him when he still lived in the orphanage.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

If that’s Uchiha Itachi on the other side…

Well, Nawaki has quite a lot of words he wants to say to the traitor, none of which are polite, but he’s very much aware of his abilities and where they rank when compared to the Uchiha prodigy _ who had slaughtered his entire clan in one night _, thank you very much.

(And yes, there is definitely something iffy about the whole massacre thing, but Nawaki has enough on his plate as it is!)

(No matter how much he wants to _hurt_ the man who took away his chance of approaching Kagami-oji before he could find the courage to do so.)

(No matter how much he abhors the idea of slaughtering one's entire _clan_.)

(Uchiha Itachi is a fucking prodigy who was ANBU at thirteen and Nawaki is still just a genin despite his past experience. He's not stupid, thank you very much.)

* * *

He’s halfway through the window, before they knock a second time, leaving a clone to take his place.

“Coming,” his clone drawls just as Nawaki hits the street and starts running.

Then starts running _ faster _ , because his clone just got skewered by a shark-like ninja with a giant fucking sword that _ eats _ his chakra, and Nawaki hates _ everything _ right now.

Everything.

Of fucking course they come after him. It would have been too much to hope that they were there for Jiraya, after all. But no. The shark-guy (Kisame, apparently, and oh, that rings a bell that Nawaki would prefer remained unrung, Kiri missing-nin Hoshigaki Kisame, wielder of Samehada, one of the Seven Swords, just like Zabuza had wielded Kubikiribocho, because _ of course _ Nawaki can’t just have _ normal _ missing-nins after him, he has to have fucking S-ranks, how is this his life?) makes it clear that they’re after him, or rather after the Kyuubi, and if Nawaki wasn’t already pissed off at the guy for being from fucking _ Kiri _ and trying to kill him, he would be even more.

If they want to kill him so badly, it should at least be for something he has actually done, not for the demon shoved into his stomach without so much as a by your leave before he was even an hour old! Assholes!

They don’t give a fuck about collateral damage either, how nice. Not. Those houses belong to actual people. Civilians. Some of whom are still _inside the fucking building that the Uchiha just set on fucking fire_.

Pyros, all of them.

And then fucking _ Sasuke _ comes out of nowhere and tries to attack Itachi.

Seriously, did they remove the asshole’s sense of self-preservation at birth or what? First Gaara, now this? Really? Nawaki wants Nanao-chan and Natsu back. Not only were they much nicer to work with than Sakura and Sasuke, they also had working survival instincts and the rare thing known as _ common sense _ . Meanwhile he’s stuck with a fangirl and a guy who thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread. Who just decided to charge a fucking _ S-rank missing-nin _ head-on with the Chidori.

He fully deserves the broken arm he gets for that, honestly. Nawaki is just surprised the moron doesn’t get killed immediately, but that just goes onto the pile of things that are iffy about the whole massacre thing. Then the older Uchiha puts the younger one in a genjutsu, and Sasuke ends up catatonic. Which is not good, but right now Nawaki is just happy that the idiot won’t be able to do anything that stupid again.

The distraction is enough for him to score a hit with a volley of shuriken (the Kage jutsu can be applied to so much more than just himself, and Nawaki _ loves it _). It’s a glancing blow, but Nawaki will take what he can get!

_ This is for Kagami-oji, asshole! _

At least the racket has the merit of attracting Jiraya’s attention, though suddenly finding himself into the guts of a giant toad rather than a back alley is not exactly Nawaki’s idea of a good time. Hoshigaki and Uchiha decide to leave rather than face one of the Sannin, which… Fair enough, Jiraya is supposedly pretty badass even if so far Nawaki has mostly seen the useless pervert side of him. But he had been Tsunade-nee’s teammate, and Oro-sensei’s, and there had been a reason all three of them had been famous. That, and Uchiha Itachi’s chakra has a distinctly _ sick _ feeling to it, which might explain why he doesn’t want to fight against a Kage-level ninja despite the fact that his companion clearly has bijuu-level chakra and is still itching for a fight. 

Then Lee’s sensei, Maito Gai, arrives (with a magnificent kick in Jiraya’s face, Nawaki likes the guy already). Apparently, the two missing-nin had stopped in Konoha first, and landed Kakashi in the hospital, in the same catatonic state as Sasuke. Who had heard about his murderous older brother being after Nawaki from Genma-san’s friend, Yamashiro-san and promptly decided to _ run away from the village to track him down _. 

_ Moron _.

The bastard is lucky that his actions can be interpreted as wanting to save his teammate, for all that this is very much not what he had wanted to do, and that he’s the last Uchiha in the village, or he would have been labelled a missing-nin before the day was over. As it is, Sasuke can probably kiss any promotion goodbye for the next two years at least, and certainly until he learns how to follow orders and respect the chain of command.

What a fucking idiot. A demerit like that is nothing to scoff at, especially since he’s definitely going to be labelled a flight risk after this. Did he really think he had a chance to kill Uchiha Itachi as he is now? _ A fucking genin _? Against someone who had a killed an entire clan of skilled shinobi, many of them chunin and above? Including some ANBU members?

Someone needs to give the asshole a reality check, and Nawaki is calling not it. Not that the idiot would listen to him anyway, but he’s not about to become Sasuke’s psychologist when the whole reason he went through the chunin exams in the first place was so he could finally leave this stupid team. 

Jiraya better keep his word on the field promotion thing.

(If not, and if Tsunade-nee does recognises him, and does agree to become Hokage, well.)

(Even odds on her promoting him or deciding to keep him a genin forever because he went and died on her, to be honest.)

(But at least she would let him change teams, if only so the two disasters don't get him killed with their bullshit, so there’s that.)

* * *

By the time they reach Tanzaku-Gai, Nawaki has been growing more and more nervous the closer they get to the city where his clones, and Jiraya’s network, have tracked his sister, though he manages to hide it from the toad sage.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if his meeting with Tsunade-nee goes the same way as the one with Oro-sensei did.

Because Oro-sensei not recognizing him, Oro-sensei attacking him, Oro-sensei focusing on Sasuke and batting him aside as if he were nothing more than an annoying insect, had nearly broken him. Only the urgency of the situation, and the fact that he hasn’t allowed himself to think about it too much, had allowed him to get his teammates to the tower and push through the prelims.

And Oro-sensei had only been his teacher for about three years before Nawaki’s untimely death.

But Tsunade-nee? Tsunade-nee who had raised him with help from their grandmother after their parent’s death, Tsunade-nee who had comforted him after nightmares and bad missions, Tsunade-nee who had believed in him and given him their grandfather’s necklace, Tsunade-nee who had healed his scrapes and listened to him ramble on and on and on about his dream of being Hokage ?

If she rejects him, Nawaki isn’t sure he’ll be able to take it.

<strike> (No. He already knows he won't be able to take it. This would be the last straw, the drop of water that breaks the dam.) </strike>

<strike> (Nawaki doesn't know what he will do if she rejects him, but he knows it won't be pretty and that he won't be there to witness the aftermath of it.) </strike>

(At least he’s pretty sure that she won’t attack him because he’s standing between her and the person she actually wants, so there’s that?)

* * *

Jiraya ditches him at the inn the second they are in sight of one of the town’s most famous pleasure house, _ again _, as if Nawaki hasn’t just been attacked by S-rank missing nins two days ago, and Nawaki takes a deep breath as he puts his bag on the bed. Going down to the inn’s inner garden, he sits down on the ground, leaning against a tree, looking for all the world like just another kid resting after a long day of travel.

His fingers touch the earth as he closes his eyes, and he expands his senses out.

Earth has never been his element, he takes too much after his grandmother and great-uncle for that, but Tobirama-oji had taught him how to sense his surroundings the day after Nawaki’s parents had been killed.

He had been so young, back then, Nawaki remembers. He remembers sitting down in the garden with his great-uncle, still pale and shaken from the night before, and rambling about the lights that had gone out. Tobirama-oji had been the one to explain that these lights had been chakra signatures, two of them his parents, the other three their killers. He had taught him, then, how to use that ability consciously, and had not been surprised when Nawaki had, with unerring ability, been able to pinpoint his sister’s presence the easiest. “She’s your sibling” Tobirama-oji had said simply. “That’s a bond that will always be there, no matter what happens.”

Touka-oba had taken over his sensor training after Tobirama-oji’s death, and she had hammered into him the importance of always knowing where not only your enemies, but also your allies are. “Because you might know where the fuckers are” she had told him bluntly “but your friends won’t. So you need to keep an eye on both of them, and be ready to warn your allies if needed. Also, people tend to be bloody stupid, so someone needs to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get themselves killed. ”

No one had taught Uzumaki Naruto anything about chakra sensing, probably thinking that the Kyuubi’s chakra would be too present for him to sense anything else.

They were wrong. Nawaki can still track chakra like the best of them, and Tsunade-nee has always been a beacon in his mind’s eye, a warm haze of chakra feeling like sunlight and hugs and healing. And he can feel her again, for the first time in this new life he still doesn’t understand nor is quite sure he even wants if it’s going to be like _ this _, and Nawaki has to bite back the tears that are threatening to rise up.

Log, it’s been so long since he last felt her chakra. He basks in it, curling it around himself like an invisible blanket, and allows his thoughts to wander towards her.

What is he going to say to her? 

_ “Hi Tsunade-nee, it’s me, Nawaki. Sorry for dying, I’m back now?” _

Like that’s going to go over well. He’s likely to be ground into very fine paste if not outright liquefied if he tries this. Maybe he should approach Shizune-chan first?

Or maybe not, he winces as he feels his friends’ chakra, close to his sister. She’s over thirty years old now, he reminds himself. Why would she recognize him, or even believe him? She had only been five when he’d died, odds were she wouldn’t even really remember him. 

Tsunade-nee probably won’t recognize him either.

What was he thinking, deciding to track her down? She’s not going to recognize him either, Oro-sensei is the smartest person Nawaki knows and even he couldn’t recognize Nawaki! She grieved for him once already, what right does he have to barge into her life like this? 

_ You’re her brother! _ A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Tobirama-oji barks at him. _ You’re hurt and confused and scared and you have every right to want to find your sister! _

He’s being selfish, Nawaki thinks, bringing his knees up to his chin, curling his arms around them as he buries his face in his knees. He’s being selfish, thinking only of himself, when his sister actually had to live through it all. Through him and Dan dying, through Orochimaru leaving, through another shinobi war, through Mito-baachan dying and the last of the Senjus perishing between the last war and the Kyuubi rampage. Through Uzushio falling and Konoha failing to come to their aid.

She had left because she couldn’t stand the losses. What right does he have to force her to face them?

He never should have come. Never.

* * *

He’s shaking, Nawaki notices distantly. He’s shaking, and there are tears rolling down his cheeks and he’s losing control on his chakra sense. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe it will be better if he doesn’t see her, if he leaves her to the life she has probably built for herself by now. He can still leave, leave Jiraya and this Konoha he doesn’t recognise, head towards the sea and towards Uzushio, towards the ruined city he has never seen in this life that calls for him nevertheless, and then…

_ But Tsunade-nee is right hErE. _

If he leaves the inn and walks down the street he'll see her. He wants to. He stays rooted where he is. He wants to run up to her. He wants to run away from her. He wants to tell her everything. He wants to leave and never tell anyone anything. He wants the world to make sense again. He wants to never have been reborn in this body. He wants to go back to before, before everything went to hell, before he died, before Tsunade-nee left and Oro-sensei went off the deep end, before nothing made sense anymore.

He wants…

He just wants his _ sister _.

* * *

There’s a loud noise coming from inside the inn, an argument and a broken door, but Nawaki barely notices it, face buried in his knees as he cries, for once allowing himself to look just like what he truly is deep down: a scared, lonely, sad little boy who doesn’t know what to do.

“_ Nawaki _?”

It’s barely more than a whisper, half-strangled, with an undertone of grief and disbelief and hope, and Nawaki’s head shoots up, tears blurring his vision.

There’s a woman standing in front of him, wearing a green vest, with blond hair and a very pale face, and her chakra is familiar familiar safe safe safe and Nawaki doesn’t even realize he’s moving before he barrels into her.

“Tsunade-nee!” He sobs, burying his face in her clothes. Warm arms instinctively wrap themselves around him, and all he can think about is that she found him, she recognized him and came to him and she’s right there and…

She is here. Tsunade-nee is _ here _ and is _ holding him _ and _everything will be alright again_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hides under my desk*
> 
> So? Was the angst worth it?
> 
> As usual, feel free to let me know what you thought of it, or to yell at me for making you cry and giving you feels ;)
> 
> Also, I have a discord! It's mostly for my One Piece fics, but there's also a channel for this fic if anyone is interested!
> 
> https :// discord .gg /xre VUA2 (just take out the spaces)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you want to do, Nawaki?” She asks instead. 
> 
> The confused look on his face breaks her heart. Had no one ever taken his own wishes into consideration?
> 
> “Me?”
> 
> She gently ruffles his hair while silently vowing to destroy anyone who hurt him before this day. Starting with her traitor of a teammate.
> 
> “You,” She repeats gently. “I’m not leaving you again, little brother. If you want to go back to Konoha, then I’ll go back with you. If you want to leave and travel with me and Shizune, then we can do that. But it has to be something you want to do. Not because it's what the council, or Jiraya, or sensei or anyone else wants, but because it’s what you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, and a very happy new year to all of you! May 2020 be a good year for everyone!
> 
> (*absolutely refuses to look at the news, because NOPE, so have something shiny instead*)
> 
> On the menu today: HUGS. And more HUGS. And tears. And more hugs. There's a lot of hugging going on...
> 
> Also featuring: FEELS, a very happy Tsunade, a very sad Tsunade, a very pissed off Tsunade, a very vengeful and vicious Tsunade, and then more FEELS because this is me we're talking about here.
> 
> But hey, at least MOST of them are happy feels! And there are hugs! (And tears, admittedly, but mostly HUGS!)
> 
> *hands out tissue boxes just in case anyway*

He feels her go down on her knees, taking him with her until she’s sitting on the ground with him in her arms, holding onto him as if scared he would disappear if she let go of him.

She’s crying too, he can feel the tears drenching his clothes, and he sobs even louder.

“_ How _ ?” Tsunade-nee asks hoarsely. “How, Nawaki? I felt your chakra all the way to the other side of the town, but you died, I saw your body! I _ buried _ you, Nawaki!”

Nawaki buries his face further into her hold.

“Nothing makes sense anymore,” He whimpers. “I missed the stupid wire and then there was fire and pain, and I know I died but then I woke up and I was a baby and by the time I realized what happened I was four years old and they call me Uzumaki Naruto and I’m the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi and the son of the Yondaime, but I’m not supposed to know about that and I couldn’t find anyone and it had been more than thirty years since I died and nothing makes sense!” He hiccups. “The clan is gone, Mito-baachan is gone, Uzushio is gone! Natsu and Nanao-chan are dead too, and Oro-sensei isn’t Oro-sensei anymore and you were _gone_ and nothing makes sense!”

She holds him tighter, running her fingers through his hair and whispering calming words. By the time they both manage to get ahold of themselves, it’s a miracle that no one came to see what the fuss was all about. But Nawaki can still feel chakra, and the innkeeper is inside with some clients and Shizune-chan’s chakra is a bit further away, and he realises that there must be a genjutsu in place to hide them.

Tsunade-nee finally lets go of him long enough for him to sit by her side instead of being sprawled all over her, at which point she’s quick to pass an arm around his shoulder and draw him closer. 

Not that he’s complaining. His fingers find their way into the fabric of her top, and clutch it tightly. He’s not letting go. He’s _ not _.

Log damn it, he’s missed her so much.

She still looks exactly the same as she did back then, he realises, looking at her now that he had stopped crying. There’s the faint hum of a seal in the background of his mind, and that’s the answer he was looking for. A seal-maintained genjutsu. Odds are, she doesn’t look that much older without the genjutsu (Uzumaki genes mixed with Senju’s make for very slow aging, he remembers), but is openly using a genjutsu so people don’t wonder about it.

<strike> (Or try to hunt her down to know how she does it.) </strike>

“Okay.” She says slowly, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s try this again. What happened, Nawaki?”

“I… was reincarnated, from what I understand,” he answers, choosing his words with care. “I… my name is supposed to be Uzumaki Naruto. My parents in this life were apparently Uzumaki Kushina, from what the Sandaime told me, and the Yondaime, which I guessed when he told me he couldn’t tell me who my father was because I might be targeted by his enemies.They both died the night the Kyuubi attacked.”

“Kushina?” Tsunade-nee mutters. “I vaguely remember her. I kept in touch with Mito-baachan,” she explains upon seeing his confused face. “We’d meet up in Uzushio for her birthday. She told me about her the last time we saw each other, shortly before she died.”

“Oh. Well, she was the jinchuuriki after Mito-baachan. Something happened when she gave birth to me and the rest is a mess,” Nawaki sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Anyway, as I said, by the time I realized that I had been reincarnated, I was three or four. I tried to stay close to the Sandaime, because I figured you’d visit your sensei at some point, right? Except you didn’t, and the compound was abandoned, and there were no Senju _at all _ in the entire village and..." He stops for a moment, buries his face in Tsunade-nee's side to try and alleviate the sheer _guilt_ that is radiating from her. He hadn't meant to make her feel guilty, but... "Then in school when they taught us about the other villages I asked about Uzushio. The sensei told me it didn’t exist, so I did some digging and found out it had been utterly destroyed. That’s also when it really hit me that it had been over thirty years and another war and that there was a chance that all the people I knew had died… I didn’t dare look into it more. I was scared of finding out that…”

That she was dead. That Tsunade-nee was _dead_ and _gone_ and that he would _never_ be able to see her again.

He takes a breath.

“Then, in the Academy, a girl in my class asked the sensei about you - she wants to be as strong as you. And the teacher decided to go into details about the Dentetsu no Sannin and what happened to them.”

He feels her wince.

“That went over as well as you would expect it. I didn’t believe it, at first, so I went digging again…”

“And found out that everything was true,” Tsunade-nee finishes for him. “I’m sorry, Nawaki. After losing you and Dan, I just… couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed Shizune and left. I stayed in touch with Mito-baachan, but that was it. But I heard whispers of what happened afterwards…”

“Oro-sensei experimented on children.” Nawaki tells her, face grim. “Konoha children. He was trying to artificially create bloodlines, apparently. Then he left when the Sandaime found out. I still can’t understand what happened, Tsunade-nee. Oro-sensei was never like this!”

His sister sighs.

“Orochimaru took you death hard,” She tells him quietly. “Especially when your teammate, Nanao-chan, jumped in front of a jutsu meant for him three weeks later. He had always been obsessed with the idea of reincarnation and finding your loved ones again in another life, ever since his parents died, but after that… I was too caught up in my own grief to remember that Orochimaru had been your sensei, and that he was grieving and that he felt guilty about it, and Jiraya was in Ame with those orphans he had taken a shine to, and then Dan died,, and I left, and then Natsu-kun’s illness caught up to him… I think, from what I’ve heard, that Sakumo’s death was the last straw for him.”

Nawaki winces, because he still has trouble believing that Sakumo-san is dead, that he killed himself in front of his five years old son because of a smear campaign that dragged him through the mud, called him a traitor and war starter. It doesn’t fit with what he could remember of the man, always smiling and teasing and fierce in his defense of his village and his people.

“He attacked us,” Nawaki whispers, and the story of the forest of Death spills out. “He didn’t recognize me, Tsunade-nee. He barely even looked at me. I only registered as an obstacle on his path to Sasuke… I… He didn’t recognize me.” His voice breaks, because it hurts, because Nawaki had looked up at the man ever since Tsunade-nee had introduced her team to her family, had grown attached to the man who had been his primary male role model after Tobirama-oji’s death.

* * *

Clutching her little brother closer, Tsunade has to take deep breathes in order to not let her anger overwhelm her_ . _ Orochimaru had been Nawaki’s _ hero _ , the person Nawaki had looked up to. She might never forgive herself for leaving Konoha like she had before he little brother was reincarnated, leaving him to fend for himself for twelve years, but she knows she will _ never _ forgive Orochimaru for this.

“How did you recognize me, Tsunade-nee?” Nawaki hiccups. “After sensei didn’t, I… I didn’t think you would be able to…”

She hits him on the head, softly, ruffling his hair. She might not have believed that reincarnation was a _ thing _ that actually happened until half an hour ago, but there was no way she would ever _ not _ recognize her brother’s chakra.

* * *

She would know it _ anywhere _, has been able to do so ever since her mother had placed a minute-old baby into Tsunade’s arms and Tobirama-oji had coaxed her into touching her chakra to Nawaki’s, into burning the feeling into her very soul.

(Not an Uzu tradition, not this time, but a Senju one, born in a time of war where taking your eyes off a family member often meant never seeing them again.)

(_ This is your brother _ , Tobirama-oji had told her, trailing his fingers over Nawaki’s brow. _ You are of the same clan and of the same blood, and you shall always find each other. Always. _)

(Tsunade is rubbish at sensing chakra, always has been, but when it came to her _ family? _ She had always been able to pinpoint their location in _ seconds _.)

(She had known, well before Orochimaru came back with two living students and a dead one, that Nawaki had died. Had felt it, days of travel away, too far away to do _ anything _ , a bright flare of panic and then _ pain pain pain _ fading into nothingness. Had tried to deny it, with all she could, to convince herself that it had been a nightmare. Had ignored her grandmother when Mito-baachan had come to her with bloodshot eyes and a decaying blood seal on her arm. Had pushed Toka-oba away when she had tried to get her to see reason.)

(Had refused to believe it until she had no choice, until she was standing in front of what was left of her little brother’s body, until she _ broke _.)

* * *

“Baka. You’re my little brother. I will always recognize you._ Always _ . Just because you’re blonde this time around doesn’t change anything.” She turns serious. “I was on my way to the casino when I felt your chakra brush against mine. At first I thought I was hallucinating, or that the alcohol had finally gotten to me, so I used my chakra to sober up.” It’s hard, telling her brother how far she had fallen, telling him what she had become, but she does it anyway, because this is _ Nawaki _ and she owes him the truth. “I followed your trail, leaving Shizune to her own devices, ready to pound someone in the face for somehow recreating your chakra, but the closer I got the more obvious it got that this was your chakra, and that you were distressed, at which point I basically threw caution to the wind and ran.”

She had thought it had been Orochimaru’s doing, at first, a _ demonstration _ of what he had promised her, had been ready to _ tear him to shreds _ if it had been, but coming face to face with this little boy, who looked _ like _ her brother but not exactly the same, but whose chakra was _ a perfect match _?

It had shocked her to the core.

She hugs him even tighter, and Nawaki leans into her embrace.

“He attacked the village, Tsunade-nee,” Nawaki whispers, burrowing his face in her side. “Invaded it during the last phase of the chunin exams, with his new village, Otogakure, and with Suna. They had another jinchuuriki there, Gaara. He holds the Ichibi, Shuukaku, but his seal… his seal was a mess, made to give him access to the bijuu’s chakra but there was no protection for him, no barrier, nothing. And he… he said he was a monster. Said his own father, the Kazekage, had tried to have him killed multiple times. Said he had to prove his existence by killing people. And I kept thinking… if I hadn't remembered, if I didn't have memories of you and of Mito-baachan, of the clan and of my team… that could have been me.” He swallowed. “Konoha… Konoha is not always a nice place, especially when you happen to hold the bijuu that nearly flattened it and killed many of its inhabitants. The younger ones don’t know, but the adults…”

“Did they touch you?” Tsunade growls, her chakra rising angry and possessive and warm. Because if they did, if they harmed a _ hair _ of her brother’s head… Well. She would have to do _ something _ about that, wouldn’t she?

“Not often” he whispers, because he has never lied to her, even when the truth wasn’t something she had wanted to hear. “A few times, when they got drunk, some people would try to, but Hokage-jiji had ANBU watching me and they usually took care of it pretty quick. But… it was lonely.” He admits, and she tugs him closer.

Her brother will never be lonely again if she can help it.

She’s a Senju, and an Uzumaki and one of the fucking Dentetsu no Sannin. She _ can _ fucking help it.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Nawaki.” Tsunade whispers, dropping a kiss on the top of his head. “I’m never leaving you again, I swear.”

“You couldn't have known” He smiles weakly. “Anyway, so I had to fight against Gaara, and he had already injured my teammates, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke - the last Uchiha still in Konoha, his brother went crazy and slaughtered them all, even Kagami-oji, and I miss him, Tsunade-nee, I wanted to tell him so badly but I was afraid and then he died and now I’ll never get to tell him and…”

Her heart breaks as she listens to him, as she spies the tears in his eyes. She had heard of the Uchiha massacre, of course she had, _ everyone _ had heard about it, had heard of Kagami-oji's death. and it had only cemented her decision to never go back to the village.

* * *

Of all of Tobirama-oji’s students, Kagami-oji had been the closest one to family. 

Sarutobi-sensei didn’t really count, because he was already _ sensei _, and still considered Tobirama-oji his sensei, but Kagami-oji? Kagami-oji had basically moved in with them after Hashirama-jiji’s death, keeping an eye on Tobirama-oji and making sure he wasn’t drowning himself in grief. He had been Nawaki’s favourite babysitter, too, always willing to play out his bedtime stories with some genjutsu.

(Kagami-oji had also been head over heels for Tobirama-oji, and Tobirama-oji had felt just as strongly, and everyone had cheered when Mito-baachan had _ finally _ managed to lock the two of them inside a closet to force them to do something about it, because for people with such high intellect they had both been pretty stupid about this.)

(They had only had a few short months together, before that fateful mission. Before Kagami-oji was dragged back unconscious on Torifu-oji’s shoulder, grief lining the faces of all of her uncle’s students.)

(Before they had to force him to move in with them, before they had to put him under suicide watch.)

(She had known then, too, had felt the disappearance of _ Water-and-Lightning _ , of _ Family-and-Wisdom _, had collapsed crying in her grandmother’s arms as the seal dedicated to Tobirama-oji had flaked off Mito-baachan’s skin.)

* * *

(She had wondered, often, if it was worth it, feeling her most precious people die. Had asked Tobirama-oji, after they buried Hashirama-jiji, after they buried her parents.)

(_Because not knowing is even worse _ , he had told her _ Because knowing them while they are alive is a gift I wouldn’t give up for anything in the world _.)

(Until today, Tsunade had firmly disagreed with that notion, especially when the losses of all her remaining Senju relatives had hit her the day of the Kyuubi attack.)

(She had lost consciousness after Toka-oba’s death, the last of many, the last straw that broke the summon’s back.)

(But now? Now that she can feel her brother’s chakra again? Now that she has _ family _ again?)

(Yeah. She understands.)

* * *

Nawaki takes a deep breath, wipes the tears away angrily, and goes on.

“So I managed to put together a seal that would keep him down long enough for Jiraya to fix him, and he detransformed and I went to find out what happened to Hokage-jiji because I knew he had been fighting Oro-sen… Orochimaru and… “ his voice falters, and his hands clench around the fabric of her top. “It was bad, Tsunade-nee. Really bad. He’s still unconscious, and the medics don’t know if he’ll wake up again.”

It’s Tsunade's turn to flinch, because this is _ sensei _, and he’s always seemed bigger than life, but before she can ask more questions Nawaki is talking again.

“Orochimaru used Tobirama-oji’s Edo Tensei, Tsunade-nee,” he whispers, and she freezes. 

Just when she thought it couldn’t have been worse...

Edo Tensei. Tobirama’s forbidden jutsu, the one that had resulted into the biggest screaming match ever heard in the Senju compound, Mito-baachan and Kagami-oji reaming the Nidaime a new one for coming up with the thing in the first place.

“Who?” There’s dread in her voice, and yet… she had felt them, briefly, for all that she had filed it away as her imagination. _ Water-and-Lightning _ and _ Wood-and-Earth, Family-and-Wisdom _ and _ Family-and-Home _ , flickering back to life for a brief moment before disappearing from her senses _again_, <strike>and how many times is she going to have to feel her precious people die without being able to do anything to stop it?</strike>

“Hashirama-jiji and Tobirama-oji. And he tried for the Fourth Hokage, but Hokage-jiji managed to stop him. He had to fight them first, and he won, but he didn’t banish them right away, just sealed their lower limbs and cut off their hands, and their bodies were made of ash and paper and crumbling away but it was Tobirama-oji, Tsunade-nee! It was Tobirama-oji and he _ recognised me! _ He recognised me and he hugged me and he told me to find you and to tell you that he loves you and he’s proud of you, and Hashirama-jiji said the same thing and…”

Nawaki is sobbing now, and so is she, because she _ misses them _ , misses them _ so fucking much _ , and she’s heartbroken that she didn’t get to see them, didn’t get to say goodbye this time either, but she’s _ glad _ , so, so very _ glad _ that her little brother got to see them, to meet his grandfather. So fucking glad that Tobirama-oji had been able to recognise him as well, to give Nawaki that little bit of reassurance and love and comfort that no one else had been able to give him before.

* * *

(They’re proud of her.)

(They said they’re proud of her, despite what she’s become, despite the fact that she _ left _ because she couldn’t take it anymore, and that…)

(That means a lot to her.)

* * *

It takes them a few minutes to stop crying, and then Tsunade asks:

“How did you get here?” Because Tanzaku Gai is not Konoha, is not even close to it while still being nominally in Fire Country, and Nawaki winces.

“Jiraya was named interim Hokage since Hokage-jiji is unconscious,” He starts, which makes her brain stall for a second. Jiraya. Hokage. What. Even. “And, well… he doesn't feel like he would make a good one. And many people were hurt in the invasion and there aren’t enough qualified healers. So he decided to go out to find you and took me with him.”

“What.” At least her idiot teammate had the brains to realise that, for all that he dreamed of the job as a child, he’s not made for it, but _ her? _ They want to make _ her _ the Hokage? Even after she _left_? After she _abandoned her village?_

“And did you know that there’s an S-class organisation of Nukenins after jinchuurikis?"

What?!

"Because I didn't until Uchiha Itachi and Hoshigaki Kisame broke down the door of the room where Jiraya had left me in Tanzaku Gai while he was out 'gathering information',” Nawaki says very fast, and Tsunade’s anger _ soars _ . Jiraya had _ what?! _ “He came back just in time, but apparently Uchiha Itachi managed to lock both Sasuke and Kakashi-san in a genjutsu and they’ve been unresponsive since. So the council ordered Jiraya to get you back to the village at any cost.”

Tsunade takes a deep breath, releases it, then takes another one. Once she feels like she can speak without wanting to kill someone, she turns to her little brother (her little brother, reincarnated but alive and well and here with her and she doesn't know what she did to deserve that but she will keep thanking the Kami for that every single day of her life).

* * *

(She nearly lost him, _ again _ , multiple times, without even knowing he had been back, because she had blocked off the part of her that could feel her relatives’ chakra after the Kyuubi attack, locked it away because there was no point, not anymore, not when all of them were _ dead _.)

(She is going to _ maim _ Jiraya.)

* * *

“What do _ you _ want to do, Nawaki?” She asks instead. 

The confused look on his face breaks her heart. Had no one _ ever _ taken his own wishes into consideration?

“Me?”

She gently ruffles his hair while silently vowing to destroy anyone who hurt him before this day. Starting with her traitor of a teammate.

“You,” She repeats gently. “I’m not leaving you again, little brother. If you want to go back to Konoha, then I’ll go back with you. If you want to leave and travel with me and Shizune, then we can do that. But it has to be something_ you _ want to do. Not because it's what the council, or Jiraya, or sensei or anyone else wants, but because it’s what _ you _ want.”

* * *

Nawaki… Nawaki pauses at that. Thinks about Konoha, the village he grew up in twice and that is sometimes as foreign to him as Suna. Thinks of his empty apartment and the whirlpool on the wall, thinks of the small altar in the corner and of the Uzushio hitai-ite hidden in the pocket of his jacket.

It's tempting, oh so tempting, to take his sister on her offer to travel. To forget about Konoha, and Oro-sensei and all the things that still don’t make sense, to go back to Uzushio, maybe, and try and find survivors and rebuild.

But Konoha with Tsunade-nee in it is no longer so daunting. And despite everything, he still loves the village of his birth.

_ One last chance, _ he thinks. And if it doesn't work out, then they'll leave and seek out Uzushio.

(It’s calling to him, the song of the sea swirling in his veins, but water is patient. Water will wait. The whirlpools will still be there to welcome him when he is ready.)

“Konoha,” He tells his sister, still buried in her side. “At least for now.”

Tsunade-nee gets the implicit message behind the words and smiles against his hair.

“For now.” She agrees.

Then.

“What do we tell the others?”

He freezes, then groans.

“I don’t know,” he admits reluctantly. “I never told anyone about me being… reincarnated. I’ve wanted to, a few times, but my instincts were screaming at me not to and the last time I didn't listen to them…” He winces. “Yeah, that didn’t end well.”

Tsunade shudders as she realises what he’s talking about.

“They're going to ask questions,” she says quietly. “Shizune will be wondering why I ran off like that. Jiraya will want to know why I’m coming back without a fight after avoiding the village for decades.”

She hesitates, looks at him and then, very quietly.

“Orochimaru came to see me a few days ago, Nawaki.”

Her brother’s head snaps up, eyes wide.

“What?!”

She nods, expression tight.

“Him and his henchman, Kabuto I think his name was? They confronted us on the way to this town. He wanted me to heal his arms - I don’t know what exactly Sensei did to him, but his arms were wrecked.”

She pauses, closes her eyes, then opens them and continues.

“He offered to bring you and Dan back by using Edo Tensei. As long as I provided the two bodies necessary for the ritual. I think… I think he knew Jiraya would be sent after me and planned on using him as one the bodies.”

“Tsunade-nee…”

She rakes her fingers through his hair, hiding her face from his prying eyes.

“I was considering it,” she whispers hollowly, chakra twisting painfully under her skin. “Maybe not Jiraya specifically, I didn’t even know he was coming after me until you told me, but… having you and Dan back… that was enough to tempt me.”

Nawaki looks at her with wide eyes, but without judgment.

(He would have been tempted, too, if he had been in her position.)

“We would have hated it,” he whispers back, even if he understands, because Edo Tensei is _ terrible _. “What I saw, what it did to Tobirama-oji? That’s not a life, Tsunade-nee, not even half of one. Tobirama-oji… he said part of him was glad Kagami-oji wasn't there to see him like this. Said he would have hated it.”

“He would have,” she chuckles, halfway to a sob. “Log, do you remember how much he yelled at our uncle for creating the stupid thing in the first place?”

“Don’t remind me,” Nawaki groans, because _ urgh _ . No one had gotten any sleep that night. “And then Mito-baachan joined in and no one got any sleep for a _week_, they were yelling so loudly.”

They laugh quietly at the memory, but then go quiet again.

“What did you tell him?” Nawaki asks, because he has to know. He doesn't think Tsunade-nee would have given in, won’t judge her if she has, because he _ understands _, but he needs to know.

“I told him I needed to think about it. He gave me a week. He’ll be back for an answer in two days.” She sighs. “Much as I would love to just leave right now, we can't afford to have him follow us back to Konoha if it is already in a vulnerable state.”

* * *

And Nawaki wants to protest, because the last thing he wants right now is another confrontation with a sensei who doesn't recognise him, doesn’t _ want _ him, but he knows his sister is right.

(She’s already thinking like a Hokage, he thinks, and there’s _ pride _ , so much _ pride _ in his very being at the thought.)

(He had wanted the hat, once, had looked at it with child-like wonder and awe, but now? Now that he is more aware of what the job entails?)

(Tsunade-nee is going to be an _ amazing _ Hokage.)

* * *

“Then what do we do?” He asks instead.

“We stay here for the next two days. We find some way of explaining the situation to Jiraya and Shizune. And then I’m going to kick Orochimaru's ass and make damn sure he doesn't come within ten miles of you ever again.”

Nawaki leans into his sister’s embrace and allows himself to just bask into her presence, in her protective embrace, in the feeling of _love family devotion protection_.

He had really, really missed her.

* * *

In the end, they decide that discretion is the better part of valour and don’t tell Jiraya and Shizune anything. In fact, Tsunade decides to avoid her old teammate completely until she’s been able to off-load some of her frustration about him _leaving her baby brother alone when he has S-class missing nins on his tail_. Preferably on her other teammate, who has actively _hurt_ said baby brother in more ways than one.

Tsunade is nothing if not viciously protective of those she loves, and it’s time she reminds the others of that.

Jiraya leaves Nawaki to train on his own while he looks for her (which just makes her want to hurt him _more_, because what the hell Jiraya, her brother has S-Class missing nins after him who already nearly kidnapped him because Jiraya _wasn't watching him _and the moron just goes and does it again?), and it’s ridiculously easy to avoid him and spend time with her brother without his knowledge. Shizune is harder to avoid, and Tsunade doesn’t like lying to her, but the brunette assumes that her master needs some time to gather her balance again after her confrontation with Orochimaru, and she isn’t completely wrong.

* * *

Part of Tsunade would like nothing more than to tear the Snake Summoner to pieces for what he did to Nawaki.

Not recognizing him is the least of his crimes.

But at the same time, she remembers now what she had forgotten, for a time. Remembers how panicked Orochimaru had been when they handed him a genin team, how worried he had been about messing up and getting these kids killed. Remembers how he had sworn to her that he would do everything he could to make sure her brother would survive this war. Remembers the rare smiles that seemed reserved for his genins, the ones that had nearly disappeared in the preceding months, war taking its toll on all of them. Remembers how all three of his genins would look at him like he had hung the moon, how Nawaki would hang onto his every word, how shy little Nanao-chan would grab onto the sleeve of his kimono and not let go, how Natsu, the little Gekko who had been determined not to let his illness take him, would talk Orochimaru’s ears off about kenjutsu, remembers how _ patient _ , how _ kind _ Orochimaru would be with all three of them.

Remembers how _ devastated _ he had been, when Nawaki had died, when little Nanao-chan had taken a kunai meant for him, when Natsu had finally succumbed to his illness.

(Sometimes, she wonders if she could have saved him. If the war hadn’t been going on, if there had been more time for her to research the genetic condition and come up with a treatment, if Natsu hadn’t died, if if if… would that have changed anything? Would Orochimaru still have walked down this dark path?)

Remembers that Orochimaru had been _ alone _ , that Jiraya had stayed behind in Ame, that she had _ left _ , and that Orochimaru did not do _ loneliness _ well.

Remembers that Hatake Sakumo had _died_, remembers that her teammate had clearly felt _something_ for the White Fang, something that had been reciprocated even if neither of them ever actually _acted_ on it, and that losing him after losing everything else, losing him not to a mission but to _suicide_, to suicide that the _village _had pushed him to, must have been the last straw.

She won’t kill him, she decides. 

But she is going to hurt him so badly that he is going to wish she had finished the job.

And that is _ before _ she makes him see just what he’s missed in regards to her little brother.

* * *

In the meantime she spends time with Nawaki, taking every opportunity to bask in his chakra and lock his signature into her brain. 

And Nawaki just beams every time he sees her, a real smile on his face even if it’s still tinged with hopeful disbelief that this is real, that she is truly here with him. He shows her seals and water jutsus, the occasional fuuton thrown in for good measure, and looks so surprised every time she praises him that she wants to hunt down his sensei and shake him like a pear tree.

And she will, she promises herself. She had liked Hatake Sakumo, had fought proudly besides him and had raged when news of his fall of grace and consequent suicide had reached her, but his son is another matter entirely, and a crap teacher beside that.

Tsunade knows herself well enough to know that she is ill-suited to handling a genin team. Give her future medics and she can train them by the dozens, but she would not be able to give a genin team the full attention they would need, not with her other responsibilities taking up most of her time. Apprentices like Shizune are another matter, and she will readily admit that she did do a great job with her lover’s niece, but she had refused any attempt to be saddled with a genin team - and there had been many. She is simply not suited to being a sensei, and she has long since made her peace with that.

Hatake should have known himself well enough to do the same, and Sarutobi-sensei should have known better than to push him on the matter.

At this point, she is going to wake her old sensei up just so she can read him the riot act, she thinks, and tries to push down her rage. It’s not easy, not when every bit of positive attention seems to surprise her brother. But she manages, because he needs her to be there for him more than he needs her to run off to avenge slights against his person.

She is still going to make them all pay, though.

* * *

For a spymaster, Jiraya is stupidly easy to avoid. He finds Shizune, though, and Tsunade knows her apprentice well enough to know that, as Orochimaru’s deadline looms and Tsunade shows no sign of leaving town, the odds are high that the brunette will spill everything to the Sennin.

That’s okay, though. Tsunade is counting on that.

She’ll need witnesses, after all, and it’s never too early to start putting the fear of her into Jiraya again. She’s been gone for too long, and he will expect the hemophobic drunkard, not the fierce kunoichi she never really ceased to be.

(There will be blood, she knows it, Orochimaru knows her weakness after all, and even if he didn’t she is going to make him bleed anyway.)

(She is terrified of blood, has been since Nawaki’s death, since Dan bled out in her arms.)

(But for Nawaki? For the baby brother that has miraculously been returned to her?)

(She will bathe in an ocean of blood for her brother.)

(She will paint the world red with the blood of his enemies if this is what it takes. And she will smile while doing it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did promise a lot of hugs, didn't I?
> 
> As usual, feel free to let me know what you thought of it, or to yell at me for making you cry and giving you feels ;)
> 
> Also, I have a discord! It's mostly for my One Piece fics, but there's also a channel for this fic if anyone is interested!
> 
> https :// discord .gg /xre VUA2 (just take out the spaces)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re a disgrace,” Nawaki tells Jiraya flatly as the man struggles to stand up on his own.
> 
> “Shut it, brat,” The Sannin retorts, but the effect is ruined by his swaying.
> 
> Nawaki rolls his eyes even as he keeps an eye on his sister’s chakra signature. She left earlier today, he knows. He had wanted to go with her, but she had insisted on going alone. At least for the first part of the fight. ‘Someone will have to drag Jiraya there anyway’, she had told him, but her eyes had been tight and he knew she didn’t want him to see what she was going to do to his former sensei.
> 
> And, loath as he is to admit it, he probably wouldn’t take it well. He is still feeling conflicted about the man, still can’t reconcile Oro-sensei with Orochimaru, his devoted teacher with this cold-blooded madman, and he’s definitely not sure he wants to face the man just yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Hope you're all doing well!
> 
> (*I absolutely refuses to look at the news AGAIN, because I currently live in Italy and everyone is freaking out and i don't need that kind of anxiety right now, so I decided to write something angsty instead because this is how I cope*)
> 
> On the menu today: ANGST. And more ANGST. And some well-deserved punches. A broken nose. A pissed off older sister. More angst.  
And a cliffhanger you're all going to hate me for :P
> 
> Also featuring: FEELS, a very pissed off Tsunade, a very vengeful and vicious Tsunade, and then more FEELS because this is still me we're talking about here.
> 
> Warning for: Violence, both physical and psychological, Kabuto being a terrifying asshole who likes to terrify little kids
> 
> And this time, none of the feels are happy ones
> 
> *throws boxes of tissues at you and then runs away to hide*

Tsunade slips Jiraya a low level poison the night before her meeting with Orochimaru. It’s much too easy, his guard is down even though he should know better, especially when he has his student’s son under his care (her baby brother, who has an S-rank missing nin organisation after the bijuu Namikaze sealed inside him, and if she could go back in time and punch the blond she would, because she remembers her grandmother and knows that she wouldn’t have wished that burden on Nawaki either) and can’t afford to be taken off-guard.

He doesn’t even notice her. She could have killed him, and he wouldn’t have noticed.

Or maybe he would have, she admits reluctantly. Jiraya had always been the best when it came to sensing killing intent and reacting to it. 

Still. Just because she doesn’t want to actively kill him (just to make him really, _ really _ miserable) doesn’t mean that he gets to be the buffoon he pretends to be so well. He’s better than that.

(But the years and the losses have taken their toll on him too, she knows, she sees it in the dark shadows lurking behind his eyes, in the hidden tension in his muscles, in the worry he can’t quite disguise in his voice when he tells Shizune about their Sensei’s condition.)

Jiraya the child had always dreamed of being Hokage, would talk about it all the time, would follow Tobirama-oji like a lost duckling whenever he could get away with it. But that Jiraya had grown up in the warring era, had loved and lost too much. Jiraya the Toad Sennin is older, wiser, and tired. He is good at what he does, but he also stays away from what he loves because he can’t take the idea of losing them. He will always love Konoha, will always be loyal to her and hers, but he can’t live there anymore, much like she couldn’t live with the vivid reminder of what was missing. He would make a terrible Hokage and he knows it, not because of a lack of ability but because his heart couldn’t take it. He would take the hat if needed, would be the tree supporting his people, but he would be dying inside as he did.

As annoyed as she is with him, Tsunade will not inflict that particular pain on him. She left him, once, and while it was what she needed to do for herself, she knows that she hurt him. 

<strike> That she hurt Orochimaru too </strike>

Tsunade will take the hat, reluctantly, sure, but she will. At least for now, at least until Nawaki decides if he wants to stay there or not, but she will and she will be good at it.

It’s not arrogance talking, nor is it nepotism (seeing both her Grandfather, uncle and sensei slave away for the good of the village had rather discouraged her from ever wanting the job), but practicality. She used to run the hospital, and it wasn’t that different from running a village. People would still place their lives in her hands. She would still have to decide if an operation was worth the risk. She would still have to choose who could be saved and who couldn’t.

She won’t like it, doesn’t expect to, but she will be good at it and it won’t eat her inside like it would Jiraya. Not with Nawaki by her side.

She is Konoha’s Godaime, still uncrowned but already standing tall and proud in defence of her loved ones and her village, when she leaves the Inn and the sleeping Shizune behind.

Orochimaru doesn’t know it yet, but he lost this battle long before it began.

* * *

She had thought long and hard about how to deal with her traitorous teammate. The easiest way to get close enough to hurt him would be to pretend to agree to his deal and to start working on his arms, but Tsunade doesn’t want it to be easy. She doesn’t want to be duplicitous, not here, not now, even if it is the shinobi way.

Because Tsunade is _ angry _ , well and truly _ furious _ , and she will not hide her fury behind a mask. She will let her emotions _ rage _, will hurl them at Orochimaru with all her strength, because he has never been able to deal with emotions before and that hasn’t changed (that has always been the problem with him, hasn’t it?). She will rage and she will storm, will allow the whirlpool that usually sleeps under her skin to come to the surface and drown her opponent before he has a chance to realise how utterly screwed he is.

She wants him to fight back. Wants him to try and bat her away, only to realise that she is not the broken shell he left behind, and she wants him to wonder _ why _. She wants him to hurt, physically and mentally and emotionally, like he hurt her brother, and she won’t hold back.

He might be her old teammate, and she might once have considered him family (she still does, and always will, she knows, but she can’t allow herself to think about that right now) but he had done the one thing she will never be able to forgive him for.

It wasn’t that Nawaki died on his watch.

It’s that he hurt him again in this life.

So when Orochimaru stops a few metres away from her and asks for her answer, she moves too quickly for him to react and slams her fist in his face.

* * *

His nose makes a very satisfying noise as it breaks under her fingers before the snake summoner is thrown against the nearby wall.

(Wasn’t that castle an important monument or something? Oh well. Not her problem.)

“In case that was unclear,” She states in the shocked silence that follows. “My answer is no.”

Orochimaru’s assistant, Kabuto, tries to attack her, but she flicks one finger at his forehead and he joins his master in the castle wall. Of course Orochimaru is moving again already, she didn’t hit him nearly hard enough to kill him, doesn’t actually _ want _ to kill him, but his nose is still bleeding because he’s _ letting _it. Because he’s trying to scare her, to use her fear against her, but the joke’s on him.

She doesn’t shudder.

“I am disappointed in you, Tsunade,” He says, annoyance ticking on his forehead. “And here I was going to restore your loved ones to you. I even agreed to give up my dreams to destroy the Leaf. I thought you would have jumped on the opportunity to bring your lover and your precious little brother back, but I guess you must not have loved them enough.”

She laughs. There’s no humour in it.

That’s a very low blow, lower even than using blood against her, designed to _ hurt _, to tear her apart, and she won’t give him the satisfaction.

(Her brother is alive and well and _ here _ , and he _ loves her _, has never stopped, just as she’s never stopped loving him even when he was dead and buried.)

“And I’m disappointed in you, Orochimaru, that you would think either of them would have stood for that kind of thing. I guess you must not have known your student well enough.”

If he’s going for low blows, then she’s not going to hold back either.

The barb strikes true, the only visible sign of it a slight clenching of his fist, but for him that is an unacceptable slip. 

_ Good _ . She’s not in any mood to be _ kind _.

“What would Nawaki think of you now, Orochimaru? Of what his beloved sensei has become?” She goes on, implacable, even as she walks up to him, slight cracks forming under her feet wherever they touch the ground.

Her control never slips once, not even as she evades the fireball his assistant throws at her. 

Every single one of these cracks is deliberate, her chakra seeping into the ground, building up, ready to be unleashed at her slightest command.

Orochimaru’s arms hand limply by his sides, unusable. For the man whose stated ambition was to master every single jutsu in the world, it has to be extremely frustrating. He can’t even attack her on his own, not unless he uses that neck-extending jutsu Nawaki described to her, can’t even summon his snakes without his lackey’s help, and oh, how the mighty have fallen.

“My brother would be so disappointed, Orochimaru. Worse, he would be hurt.”

Her fist crashes in the spot he had been standing on half a second earlier. Had it actually managed to hit him, it would still have hurt less than the words she’s hurling at him, she knows. Part of her hates being so cruel to him. But the part that is screaming for his blood is much louder.

“And if there is one thing I can’t stand,” she goes on even as she turns around and throws a boulder twice her size at him. “It’s people who hurt my little brother!”

* * *

“You’re a disgrace,” Nawaki tells Jiraya flatly as the man struggles to stand up on his own.

“Shut it, brat,” The Sannin retorts, but the effect is ruined by his swaying.

Nawaki rolls his eyes even as he keeps an eye on his sister’s chakra signature. She left earlier today, he knows. He had wanted to go with her, but she had insisted on going alone. At least for the first part of the fight. ‘_ Someone will have to drag Jiraya there anyway _’, she had told him, but her eyes had been tight and he knew she didn’t want him to see what she was going to do to his former sensei.

And, loath as he is to admit it, he probably wouldn’t take it well. He is still feeling conflicted about the man, still can’t reconcile Oro-sensei with Orochimaru, his devoted teacher with this cold-blooded madman, and he’s definitely not sure he wants to face the man just yet.

He will, though, because his sister is fighting him, is fighting him on his behalf, and Nawaki will always love her more than he loves loved his sensei.

Shizune rushes in, shaking him out of his musings, and he drinks in the sight of her as she tells Jiraya all about Orochimaru’s offer.

She’s older, of course, and doesn’t look much like the five years old girl he still remembers her as, but her chakra hasn’t changed, and her face has grown to resemble her uncle’s, her features more feminine than Dan’s, sure, but there is definitely a resemblance here that hadn’t been so flagrant thirty years ago. She doesn’t recognize him, and while he feels a sliver of hurt, he expected it. She had only been five when he died, hadn’t even started learning how to use her chakra back then, and he’s been keeping his under a tight lock save for the tendril that had latched onto his sister and was never going to let go ever again.

“For a supposed spymaster, you sure are shit at situational awareness,” he tells the Sennin when he realizes that his sister must have poisoned him. “You didn’t even notice that she slipped you something, how have you survived so long?”

Jiraya’s attempt at a headslap fails lamentably. Sadly, Shizune manages to take care of the poison well enough for the man to be able to run, and Nawaki can’t stall them any longer, and soon they are on their way to the rendezvous point.

* * *

How any of them could have missed that a fight of this magnitude was happening not even five kilometres from them Nawaki will never know. Had Tsunade-nee put up some kind of large-scale fuinjutsu-anchored genjutsu in advance? His sister isn’t known for the quietness of her techniques, and he can spot the first signs of her actions already, now that they’re getting closer.

(Wasn’t that castle a landmark or something? Oops. Eh, not his responsibility.)

(He’s _ so _ asking her to teach him that fuinjutsu-anchored genjutsu. With his current reserves, that might be the only way for him to ever use genjutsu properly.)

Tsunade-nee’s chakra is dangerously calm and collected, even as the number of craters indicates that the fight is definitely on going. It’s tightly controlled, with an undercurrent of cold fury that has him repress a wince at the feel of it, even though he _ knows _it’s not aimed at him. 

As they get closer, the sounds of the fight become clearer, and they suddenly find themselves in a clearing at the edge of a massive crater.

Yep, that’s his sister’s handiwork, alright. He hopes someone knows a good Doton jutsu to fix it up afterwards, or the locals are going to be pretty pissed off.

Eh, he’s just a genin, it’s not his problem anyway.

Next to him, Jiraya swears and Nawaki focuses back on the fight (he had been trying no to look too closely, doesn’t want to see Orochimaru, still doesn’t know how to act towards the man) just in time to see the massive cloud indicating that a high level summon had just been called.

It’s on Orochimaru’s side of the field. And that means Manda. Shit. Nawaki doesn’t want to have to fight Manda! He _ likes _ Manda, and also Manda is a fucking pain in the ass to fight!

“Well Orochimaru? Why have you dragged me here? You know I don't like being summoned. Maybe I should just eat you and be done with it!”

Kabuto says something, too low for Nawaki to hear, but Manda’s dismissal of the grey haired teen is obvious. 

(And maybe Nawaki feels a tiny bit happy about it, that Kabuto hasn’t managed to gain the summon’s favour despite being Orochimaru’s right-hand man, but that’s for him to know and no one except maybe his sister to ever find out.)

(He might be a tiny little bit bitter about having been replaced by an asshole, so sue him.)

“So Orochimaru, when this is over I'll expect a hundred human sacrifices!” The snake boss roars, and Nawaki freezes.

* * *

Manda is a grumpy old codger that likes to complain, but the request for _ human sacrifices _ is definitely a new one. 

Human sacrifices. Human sacrifices. Manda is asking for human sacrifices in exchange for being summoned to battle. Manda never did that before, there’s no way, no fucking way Oro-sensei would agree to that kind of thing - 

And then Orochimaru agrees.

Orochimaru agrees, and Nawaki’s heart _ breaks _ , _ again _ and he wants to puke.

How far has his sensei fallen? He wonders in dissociated disbelief. That his summons have fallen with him? Manda had always been grumpy, yes, but he had also allowed Nawaki and his teammates to use him as an improvised slide more than once, had called them _ snakelings _ and protected them and helped them train, had allowed them to keep parts of his shedded skins, had listened with the snake equivalent of an indulgent smile as Nawaki had waxed poetics about snake summons and how excited he was about getting to sign the snake contract once he made chunin and...

Nawaki doesn’t understand how the summon could have changed so much, even if one of the snakes summons aspect was mutation and ability to change and adapt. 

What had happened, to Oro-sensei and to Manda both, that Manda had needed to adapt into _ this _?

That Manda is publicly dismissing Orochimaru, berating him for daring to summon him in the first place? What could have led to such a schism between summoner and summon?

* * *

Over on the battlefield, Tsunade sees the same thing as her voice rings over the clearing.

“Human sacrifices? Have you stooped so low, Manda? Or is that how you’ve always been, both of you? And to think, Nawaki had been looking forwards to being allowed to sign your contract. I’m finding myself glad he never did, because this would have broken his heart.”

The massive serpent’s head rears back at the accusation, tongue flicking out in outrage, but Nawaki also recognizes the tightening of scales around his eyes from long hours spent talking with snakes and learning the minute shifts of their expressions. 

Shame, he realises. Regret. And… grief.

Nawaki doesn’t know what to make of this.

<strike> (What happened what happened why are you like this Manda Oro-sensei what happened I want you back I want you back nothing makes sense anymore I want you _ back _ -) </strike>

* * *

Jiraya’s hand slams on the ground at the same time as Tsunade’s, and seconds later Katsuyu and Gamabunta join the battle, keeping Manda at bay while Jiraya makes a beeline for her.

“You poisoned me!” He complains, even as he instinctively checks her for injuries, and his eyes widen when he sees the blood on her fingers and the absence of shudders.

“You let your guard down in an unsafe environment. You had it coming,” she snaps in annoyance. “Especially since you had already gotten tricked once less than a week ago, and have a boy under your care that has S-rank missing nins after him!”

“What…”

“Talk less, fight more!” She counters, sparing him the barest glance even as she rushes back into the battle, landing effortlessly on Katsuyu’s head. “It has been a while, my friend,” She greets her summon with a fond smile. “My apologies for neglecting you for so long.”

“You seem better,” Katsuyu notes, voice gentle. “That is good. Why are we fighting Manda’s summoner?”

“Because he apparently turned into a freaking moron while I was gone,” Tsunade grits her teeth. “I don’t know exactly what happened during that time, Katsuyu,” she adds, quieter. “But he changed. He hurt children. Nawaki would be heartbroken.”

“Then it is up to us to show him the errors of his way,” Her summon agrees, and together they charge.

* * *

Nawaki doesn’t even _ try _to join this fight. He knows better. Those three are leagues above his level, no matter how much better he’s become since his first life, and he would only handicap Tsunade-nee and Jiraya if he tried. Instead, he sticks close to Shizune-who-doesn’t-recognize him, and who seems to have decided that it was her job to keep an eye on him.

Oh the irony, being babysat by the little girl he used to babysit.

Someone, somewhere, is definitely laughing at him, and Nawaki wants to kick them in the shins.

Instead, he focuses on his surrounding. He keeps an eye on the fight, yes, but he extends his chakra outwards, trying to keep track of everything.

It’s the only reason he notices Kabuto before it’s too late.

“Get down!” He cries out, pushing Shizune-chan (<strike>no, Shizune-san, or Shizune, she is an adult now, not the little girl who would beg him for piggy back rides, and she doesn’t know him anymore, so he can’t call her Shizune-chan any longer</strike>) away even as he jumps backwards to evade the chakra scalpel that had been aiming for his chest.

Shizune is quick to react, throwing a handful of (probably poisoned) senbons at the silver-haired teen, who manages to dodge them though they force him to back off a few steps.

Apparently Nawaki is not the only one who decided that getting involved in a battle between the legendary Sannin was not a good idea.

He really could have done without the henchman deciding to target him instead, though.

“Get the fuck away from me, you traitor,” Nawaki hisses, calling forth a water whip from the canteen hanging at his side.

“My my Naruto-kun, such harsh words from someone so young~” Kabuto sing-songs at him.

Nawaki really, really want to punch him. In the face. With sharp objects. Sharp, poisoned objects.

* * *

Because Kabuto is a traitor and an asshole and pretended to be friendly while he was helping an enemy invade their village all along.

(Because Kabuto is Orochimaru’s, is Oro-sensei’s trusted subordinate and it _ aches _ that he has been replaced by such a duplicitous asshole. First the Uchiha, now _ this?! _ Oro-sensei's standards must have done a one eighty since his death of this is the kind of people he surrounds himself with nowadays.)

But asshole or not, Kabuto is _ good _ . And Nawaki, for all that he’s lived two (very short) lifetimes, is still a genin not even six months out of the academy, with subpar instructors for most of his second life, and while he is a _ good _ genin, one who trains on his own and learns new jutsus and new seals because he _ doesn't want to die, not again _, Kabuto is easily jounin-level. Upper-jounin level at that. As in, probably on Kakashi-san's level, though maybe not on Sakumo-san’s.

He also has a regeneration factor at least twice as fast as Nawaki’s own, which is just _ not fair _ because Nawaki is half-Uzumaki _ and _a jinchuuriki this time around and his healing factor is nothing to scoff at to start with. He doesn't know if Kabuto was born with it or if it’s the result of one of Oro-sensei's experiment and he doesn't quite want to know, but it’s definitely a pain in the ass. Even his half formed rasengan is barely more than an inconvenience to the grey haired bastard, for log’s sake, and that’s the strongest jutsu in Nawaki’s current arsenal !

(He tries not to think about how Kabuto obtained this ability. Tries not to think of Oro-sensei experimenting to give subjects a high-speed regeneration factor after losing two of his students to battle-wounds and the third to a genetic illness.)

(He thinks about it anyway and it _ hurts. _)

* * *

This battle is not going to end well, Nawaki knows it. He’s got Shizune on his side, but they aren’t used to fighting together and their efficiency is halved because of it. 

It doesn’t help that his first instinct is still to try and keep her out of the fight because _ she’s only five _ except she’s not any longer, and that Shizune is trying to keep _ him _ safe because he’s just a kid.

Kabuto has no trouble keeping the pressure on them, despite being outnumbered, and keeps a running commentary of their failures all the while. Nawaki stops listening to the asshole two minutes into the fight, not in the mood for more condescending bullshit, but something he says infuriates Shizune, who spits a cloud of poison at him.

Nawaki is definitely impressed. That poison mist feels _ nasty _. He highly approves, especially when he senses the brief flash of panic coming from their opponent, and he flashes Shizune a thumbs up.

That moment of distraction proves to be their downfall, because Kabuto suddenly surges from beneath Shizune, chakra scalpel covered hands grabbing her ankles and severing her muscles. She collapses, barely able to spit another mouthful of senbon at the Oto ninja to defend herself. He jumps back, but Nawaki is now on his own against the asshole until she can heal herself, and he’s very much not looking forwards to this.

Behind him, the battle of the Sannin is still ongoing, his awareness of his sister's chakra keeping him informed of her state, but he can’t afford to spare any more attention on that fight, not when Kabuto is rushing at him with glowing hands.

He manages to avoid the first few strikes, retaliate with a suiton and fuuton combination jutsu that wins him a few seconds of breathing room, but Kabuto goes underground again and Nawaki can’t avoid the strike that severs the tendon in his right leg, not when the amount of chakra emanating from the other battle is messing with his sensor abilities.

(It’s the fucking _ Sannins _ fighting _ each other _, of fucking course there’s a shitton of chakra in the air, and that’s a pain to try and filter through on a good day, and even more so while in the middle of a fight.)

He tries to move away, but Kabuto is faster, striking at his left leg and arm in quick succession, and Nawaki hits the ground, hard, barely managing to roll away to avoid a strike to his heart.

This is… very much not good, he thinks, panic growing inside him as Kabuto nonchalantly strides toward him, twirling a kunai almost absentmindedly as he describes how much pleasure he’ll take in riding the world of the presence of such an useless waste of space. 

Shizune is too far away to intervene, even if he can see her frantically trying to heal her legs. But muscles and ligaments are tricky things, and he knows she won’t make it in time.

His vision flashes white and _ no no no not again I can’t I can’t _and dark heavy chakra rises in his gut but he can’t let it, can’t let the Kyuubi out because Tsunade-nee is there and oh log Tsunade-nee is there and he’s going to die again and it will destroy her and…

Kabuto is getting closer and closer and Nawaki is struggling to crawl away with his one good arm but he’s shaking and sweating and he’s going to _ die- _

Then Kabuto mentions that he’ll have to cut Nawaki's body to pieces before burning it to ashes to ensure that the Kyuubi would not heal him, and Nawaki - Nawaki _ loses it. _

His chakra flares, wild and panicked and all he can think of is _ fire and pain and so much pain torn to shreds hurts hurts hurts I don’t want to die Oro-sensei I’m scared scared scared scared help me help me help me TSUNADE-NEE! _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hides behind her desk*  
I did warn you it would be a cliffhanger! Please don't kill me! If you kill me I can't post the next chapter :P
> 
> As usual, feel free to let me know what you thought of it, to yell at me for making you cry and giving you feels or for leaving you on such an evil cliffhanger of doom!
> 
> Also, I have a discord! It's mostly for my One Piece fics, but there's also a channel for this fic if anyone is interested!
> 
> https :// discord .gg /xre VUA2 (just take out the spaces)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nawaki is a child of water and wind, a child of Uzushio for all that he was born and raised in Konoha twice over, but Tsunade has always been more attuned to the ground beneath her feet, the strong rock upon which her grandfather had laid down the foundations of his dreams. For all that Uzumaki blood flows strongly through her veins, she is a Senju to the bones, the deep roots and the steady trunk and the strong branches that shelters her clan, broken and scattered as it might be, and for all that none of her clan have ever manifested the Mokuton since Hashirama-jiji, she knows, like a whisper at the back of her mind, that Earth has always been hers nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!
> 
> First of all, I hope all of you are okay and that your loved ones are safe as well. A lot happened in the world since I posted the last chapter, and I hope you all managed to weather this storm as well as possible.
> 
> I'm doing... better. Lockdown and quarantine took a heavy toll on me, and I'm not back to normal by a long shot, but i'm better. The lockdown has been lifted where I live - with some restrictions remaining - and being able to go back to the office, see friends in real life and move around further than 200m from my house has really helped. I'm also going back home in two weeks and really looking forwards to that.
> 
> I have also been following the current Black Lives Matter protests and while I am currently unable to attend any of them, I definitely agree with the movement and that the current situation has been unacceptable for a long time. Something has to change. If you're going to the protests, my thoughts are with you and I hope you stay safe <3
> 
> This chapter took a while, because of the above-mentioned circumstances and also because it fought me for three months before the muse bullied me into writing it in four days xD It's all Manda's fault, he made me rewrite all my outline for this fic because he decided to have FEELS.
> 
> On the menu today: ANGST. And more ANGST. And some FURY as well. A lot of broken bones. A pissed off older sister. More angst. Manda giving me FEELS and lecturing people.
> 
> And NO cliffhanger you're all going to hate me for this time xD
> 
> Also featuring: FEELS, a very pissed off Tsunade, a very vengeful and vicious Tsunade, and then more FEELS because this is still me we're talking about here. Tsunade basically took over this chapter and I regret nothing.
> 
> I hope you'll like it!

Kabuto is nearly upon him, kunai twirling in one hand and the other glowing blue with a chakra scalpel, and Nawaki can't breathe, can't move, and this is it, he's going to die, die in front of Tsunade-nee who is rushing towards him but isn't going to make it in time and it's going to _break her_ and Nawaki doesn't want to hurt her, doesn't want to put her through that again and-

Tsunade-nee's chakra, wrapping itself around him, desperately reaching for him-

Something heavy slamming into the ground, hard enough to cause Kabuto to stumble for just a second-

A rush of chakra inside him, dark and agitated-

The Kyuubi’s chakra rises inside him, not overwhelming him, not trying to take over but supporting him instead, and he can feel his injuries healing even as he rolls and evades the scalpel that is coming for him, and he can _think_ again, can _breathe_ again. Then he stands up on his newly healed legs, and the rasengan that forms in his hand is dark blue this time, not the lighter blue it usually is.

_ The dark blue of the deepest part of the ocean, the colour of Uzushio’s grief _ and the rasengan slams into Kabuto’s stomach and propels him towards a cluster of rocks.

Nawaki is panting, breathing harshly, but he’s standing even if the rush of adrenaline and foreign chakra is fading. He turns around to where Shizune is, and freezes as a wave of killing intent suddenly focuses on him. He tries to move, to turn around, but he can’t, he’s frozen, because this is Oro-sensei’s killing intent and it’s focused on him and he can’t, he can't, he can take a lot but he can't take this, not Oro-sensei, but he can't move, can't even turn around, can only stand in place as the killing intend rushes towards him and-

_ TSUNADE-NEE! _

* * *

Tsunade has just grabbed Orochimaru by his precious hair and is using it to throw him towards Jiraya when she feels it, Nawaki’s chakra, wild and panicked and  _ screaming for her  _ and she’s running before she knows it, letting go of Orochimaru's hair and jumping away from the fight she’s currently in to rush towards the edge of the field where Orochimaru's minion is towering over her baby brother, one hand holding a kunai and the other bathed in the blue glow of the chakra scalpel jutsu every medic nin learns, as if considering which one to use to snuff her brother's life out and she sees  _ red. _

Red like the blood she once feared, red like the hair she didn’t inherit from her grandmother, red like the strength of Uzushio that flows in her veins regardless, red like the malevolent chakra of the Kyuubi that she never had to host, but is currently emanating from her brother.

(Red like the haori Jiraya wears as he swears and turns towards his student, red like the markings on his face that contort in panic as he realises how much danger his student's son is in, realises how far away he is, realises that  _ he will be too late  _ again-)

(Red like the blood still marking Orochimaru's pale face as the man flinches, movement all but invisible, as the wave of chakra reaches him, confuses him and  _ scares him _ ,  _ reminds him _ of what he has lost, what he has buried deep inside him. Red like the blood that had once been splattered all over him when he came back with two live students and a dead one.)

(Red like the angry tongue hissing out of Manda's mouth as his tails hits the ground right next to her with enough force to make the earth  _ shudder _ , with enough force to make Kabuto stagger, just for a second, just long enough.)

Red like the chakra that engulfs her brother, not taking over but  _ helping _ , red that turns the rasengan in her brother’s hand the deepest indigo ( _ the colour of grief _ , she  _ remembers _ ) as he slams it into Kabuto’s stomach. 

Red like the blood that seems paints the stone into which Orochimaru's henchman crashes crimson, red like the gaping wound in his body as he hits the ground and  _ stays down. _

* * *

The silence that follows is  _ deafening _ .

(Tsunade is no sensor, not like Tobirama-oji or Touka-oba, not like Nawaki, but she knows her brother, knows Jiraya and Shizune, knows  _ Orochimaru _ still, despite the years that have gone by and the horrors he committed, and in the silence their chakra are  _ loud. _ )

Nawaki.  _ Receding panic, adrenaline fueling his movements, relief at the defeat of an enemy, clinging to her chakra like a lifeline, a panic attack looming but contained for now- _

Shizune.  _ Fear worry anguish frustration relief- _

Jiraya.  _ Guilt panic grief self recrimination relief- _

Orochimaru.  _ Confusion twisted grief anger wrong wrong wrong there’s something wrong with his chakra why is she only noticing this now fear- _

Her baby brother staggers to his feet, staggers away from the grey haired bastard and towards Shizune, and she barely has enough time to breathe in relief before Manda's tail makes another swipe for her even as his fangs aim for Gamabunta's head, and Tsunade turns her attention back to her own fight even as she orders Katsuyu to send one of her fractions to her apprentice and another to her brother, just in case. 

(There’s something  _ wrong  _ with Orochimaru, something very, very  _ wrong  _ and Manda knows something and she will beat it out of both of them, out of her former teammate and his summon, and she will make it  _ hurt _ just like they hurt her brother.)

She jumps up and lands on the serpent's tail, ready to retaliate, but then Nawaki’s chakra spikes again, terror and confusion and  _ hurt and betrayal _ , his chakra  _ screaming _ for her, and she feels Orochimaru’s killing intent spike at the same time, the  _ wrong wrong wrong _ scream of his chakra loud enough to  _ hurt _ .

(This, she had forgotten: Orochimaru has never dealt well with  _ fear.  _ His first reaction has always been to kill what scares him.)

She’s moving before it fully registers, before she can see that Orochimaru is rushing towards Nawaki, neck extended and Kusanagi aimed at her  _ brother’s back _ and she focuses chakra to her feet and  _ moves _ , faster than she ever has before as Manda bucks up under her, the movement propelling her forward even faster.

_ No no no nononononono she refuses she is not going to lose him again, not this time, she ReFuSeS- _

Tsunade has never learned her great-uncle’s jutsu, the one the Fourth Hokage had perfected and turned into his signature move.

But she is _Senju_ and she is _Uzumaki_, daughter of the woods and of the whirlpools, and she is _Tsunade_ and she _will_ _not lose her brother!_

A flash of chakra around her, her sheer  _ will _ bending time and space around her because she needs to be  _ faster- _

* * *

(Here's the thing most people will never know: Senju Tobirama may have been the one to experiment with the Flying Thunder God first, the one to put in into seals, but he had to get the idea from  _ somewhere _ .)

(Uzumaki Mito may have been a princess, but she had been a princess of  _ whirlpools _ and had never let something as  _ trivial _ as the laws of nature stand in her way when it came to protecting her people.)

(Tsunade is more Senju than Uzumaki and she knows it, but she is still Uzumaki Mito's granddaughter.)

(And her baby brother  _ needs her. _ )

* * *

Space folds around her, distance rendered meaningless.

The sword pierces her stomach, and through her back, because it had been aiming for a child’s heart, not an adult’s (her  _ brother’s  _ heart, she thinks, her _ baby brother’s broken heart _ ) and she looks up, straight into Orochimaru’s startled face, and  _ snarls _ .

Behind her, Nawaki is still, frozen, his back to hers, but the sword did not reach him and she will forever be grateful for this, for this and for the fact that he didn’t see the sword impaling her.

(This is going to be bad enough. No need to traumatise him even more by making him have nightmares about her dying so soon after they found each other again.)

Her right arm is already moving by the time Orochimaru's realises what just happened, and the sound of broken bones as her fist collides with his cheek is music to her ears.

Orochimaru retracts his sword and his neck as he reels back from the punch, the blade leaving her torso with a disgusting squelch. 

Anyone else would be bleeding out, but she is  _ Uzumaki _ and she is  _ Senju _ and she is  _ Tsunade of the Sannin _ , the best medic-nin in the world, and if something as  _ mundane  _ as a sword to the stomach could kill her, then she deserves none of these titles. The wound is gone as soon as the sword is out, erased as if it had never existed in the first place, the tear and blood on her clothes the only proof left behind.

She lets her chakra burst free, lets it wash over her brother and free him from Orochimaru’s killing intent even as her eyes stay on her former teammate, her own killer intent rising. 

* * *

(There is something so very very wrong with him, his chakra twisted and torn in a way that she should have noticed earlier, but didn’t, hadn’t, not until Nawaki’s chakra  _ screamed _ for help as Kabuto stood over him.)

(Not until Nawaki’s chakra had screamed for  _ them _ , for her  _ and  _ Orochimaru both, and maybe that’s what did it, what washed away whatever was hiding this… this  _ corruption _ from her sense, what made Orochimaru  _ panic _ and try to kill him.)

(There is something very, very wrong with Orochimaru, and Manda  _ knows _ , and Tsunade is going to find out what it is, no matter what, but first she is going to make  _ damn fucking sure _ that neither of them will be able to hurt her baby brother ever again.)

* * *

Nawaki takes a deep, shuddering breath and turns around slowly, staying behind her, and she feels one of his hands grab at the back of her now blood-stained jacket, like a much younger Nawaki used to do when he was scared, and he’s  _ shaking _ , and Tsunade is  _ furious _ .

She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t dare turn around and take her eyes off Orochimaru again, who has taken a leap back and was immediately set upon by a furious Jiraya, but her chakra embraces him tighter. _ I am here you are not alone I am here I am not leaving you again I will protect you you are safe safe safe I will keep you safe this time I SwEaR. _

“Stay with Shizune,” She tells him gently. “I’ll be there as soon as I’ve dealt with this  _ trash _ .”

“Tsunade-nee,” he whispers, and he sounds so small, so young, so heartbroken, and Tsunade really, really wants to break something.

It’s a good thing that Orochimaru already volunteered himself.

(She’s going to  _ break him _ this time, break him and take out whatever is wrong and then put him back together again and make him  _ apologise _ , and it’s not going to be easy and it’s certainly not going to be painless but she has to  _ try _ .)

(And if it’s something he did to himself, if he  _ wanted _ to become this twisted version of her best friend? Wanted to become someone who would hurt the student who had adored him so?)

(Then she’ll put him down  _ herself. _ )

“I’ll be right there with you, I promise. I swore I wouldn’t leave you again, remember? And I keep my promises, always. I’m not going anywhere, kiddo.”

It takes a small push of her chakra against his, laced with all the reassurances she can give him, but he goes, not taking his eyes off her (off  _ Orochimaru _ ) and his chakra feels  _ hurt _ , feels  _ devastated,  _ and Tsunade is  _ furious _ .

“Tsunade-shishou?” Shizune asks from behind, voice confused and shaken as she gets to her feet. “What…”

“Shizune.” Tsunade interrupts her. “Katsuyu. Protect this boy. No matter what.”

Her voice is calm, even, and she doesn’t look back, doesn’t look away from Orochimaru even when Katsuyu disengages herself completely from the summons fight that had started again to gather around Shizune and Nawaki instead, forming a protective wall to shelter them.

It has the added benefit of hiding what is about to happen from her brother’s sight, though she unfortunately can’t do anything about his sensing abilities.

She would spare him this, if she could. But she can’t, and so she takes a deep breath and a step forward instead.

* * *

Beneath Tsunade’s feet, the earth rumbles, ready to rise up at her slightest urging.

Nawaki is a child of water and wind, a child of Uzushio for all that he was born and raised in Konoha twice over, but Tsunade has always been more attuned to the ground beneath her feet, the strong rock upon which her grandfather had laid down the foundations of his dreams. For all that Uzumaki blood flows strongly through her veins, she is a Senju to the bones, the deep roots and the steady trunk and the strong branches that shelters her clan, broken and scattered as it might be, and for all that none of her clan have ever manifested the Mokuton since Hashirama-jiji, she  _ knows _ , like a whisper at the back of her mind, that Earth has always been hers nonetheless.

It’s a matter of mere seconds for her to be standing between Gamabunta and Manda, between Jiraya and Orochimaru, between two men who had once meant the world to her.

(Who  _ still _ mean the world to her, despite this, despite  _ everything. _ )

* * *

(“We never truly suffer except from the harm done by those we love,” her grandmother had told her once, when Tsunade had wondered why her grandfather was so  _ sad _ sometimes. “Harm that comes from an enemy does not hurt you in the same way.”)

(“But wasn't Uchiha Madara his enemy?” She had asked, all of five years old with no idea of the complexity of emotions and feelings. “He tried to kill Tobirama-oji!”)

(“That doesn't mean that your grandfather didn't love him, dearest. Or that he doesn't love him still, despite everything.”)

(She hadn't understood, back then.)

(But now? Now she does.)

(Because despite everything, everything Orochimaru has done and everything he has said, despite the fact that he just  _ tried to kill her brother _ … she still loves him, and always will.)

(That doesn't mean that she is going to let him get away with this, though, twisted chakra or not.)

(Doesn't mean that right here, right now, part of her doesn't  _ hate him _ for what he has done.)

(After all, hatred is too strong an emotion to waste on someone you don't love.)

* * *

It takes a mere thought for the ground between the two boss summons to turn to swamp, then dry again, trapping them half-way up, all without a single hand sign from her.

_ She is Tsunade of the Senju and the Earth is hers to command. _

“Enough.” She says, and her voice rings loudly in the sudden silence.

“Defending children now, Tsunade?” Orochimaru mocks her, but there’s something in his eyes, something  _ unsettled _ and  _ confused  _ and  _ fearful, _ a hint of  _ disbelief _ and  _ recognition, _ being pressed back by the  _ wrong twisted thing _ , and she will  _ break him _ .

“Killing children again, Orochimaru?” She snaps back. “Congratulations. I didn’t think you could actually make me want to  _ break every single one of your bones _ with my own bare hands, but you just did.”

“Tsunade…” Jiraya starts, but she doesn’t spare him a single glance, simply raises a hand and he falls silent, settling into uneasy attention by her side.

“And what makes this one child so special, Tsunade-hime?” Orochimaru asks, and the tone is mocking, but there’s something in the way he says it, something hidden in the back of his eyes, as if he  _ knows _ something is wrong but can’t quite figure out what. “That you would jump to his rescue like this, take the blow for him instead of running away like you always do? I thought you were smarter than this.”

“And I thought you actually had morals, so obviously we’re all going to be disappointed in each other today.” She replies, but she doesn’t miss the accusation hidden in his words. 

<strike> _ Why do you stay for this boy when you couldn’t stay for me? _ </strike>

He growls, and she laughs.

“Poor poor Orochimaru,” She mocks. “Unable to see what is right before his eyes. How far have you fallen, Orochimaru? Your arms are sealed, your jutsu out of reach. Manda has rejected you and you can’t even bring yourself to acknowledge it. You experiment on children, children younger than your own genins were when they died, and you can’t recognize truth when it’s being slammed into your face. I might have been tempted to answer your question, had you asked earlier today.” Had he not tried to kill her brother. “But not anymore.”

She slams her foot in the ground, the earth rushing to her call even as she rushes towards him.

Orochimaru avoids the earth spikes, tries to lunge for her, neck and tongue extended and Kusanagi drawn out again, but she steps aside and grabs his neck from the back instead, just like he had taught her when showing her how to handle snakes.

(It seems so long ago now, the pale child gently, reverently putting a snake in her arms, telling her how to hold it so as to not hurt it.)

(Fuck but she misses him.)

“Unless you want me to make the rest of your body as useless as your arms, you will stop immediately, Orochimaru.” 

Her voice is soft, almost quiet, but the hand that grips his neck is glowing green and clenching slightly to prove that she won’t hesitate.

And she doesn’t. Orochimaru drops his sword and tries to jump away, to tear his neck from her grip, but she flicks her chakra and his body shudders before falling limp in her hold.

A simple chakra trick, a small block right at the base of his neck, hitting both his spine and his main tenketsu. Orochimaru is completely paralysed from the waist down, and his chakra has also been locked away. She will need to seal him up if she wants it to last longer than a couple of hours, but for now it will do.

(It also has the added benefit of locking whatever is  _ wrong _ with Orochimaru’s chakra in place for her to look at later.)

(She still wants to break every single bone of his body, wants it so much that it's taking all her self-control not to do so right now.)

(But there's something _wrong_ with him and until she knows just how wrong she will not break him. Not yet.)

She taps her foot to the ground, and the earth rushes up to wrap around Orochimaru like a cocoon, leaving only his head free. Another, and, further away, the unconscious Kabuto finds himself wrapped in earth as well, just in case. And if the earth is just a  _ tiny _ bit too tight, if the bones in Kabuto’s limbs are squeezed just a  _ tiny _ bit too much until they turn into powder, well. Bastard shouldn’t have tried to kill her brother.

“You really, really shouldn’t have tested my patience,” she tells him, before letting go.

The earth will hold him as long as she deems it necessary. She will need to examine him in more details, to check his chakra for the origin of that taint, to see if there are any seals on him that might explain his behaviour.

But that can wait. After all, she thinks, turning around, there is someone else here who can tell her what the  _ fuck _ is wrong with him.

“Manda,” she says, and her voice is colder than frost.

* * *

(Manda, whose tail had hit the ground hard enough to make it shake and make Kabuto lose his footing. Manda, who had bucked up beneath her and thrown her off exactly in the direction she needed to go. Manda, who had demanded sacrifices and had refused to cooperate. Manda, who had not hidden his disdain for Orochimaru’s minion.)

(Manda, who has made it clear that he disagrees with his summoner’s actions but who hasn’t broken the contract. Manda, whose tongue has been flicking in Nawaki’s direction, tasting the air as if looking for something.)

(Manda, who had loved her brother, who had chosen him as his next summoner. Manda, who had raged right along Orochimaru when Nawaki had been killed. Manda who had brought Katsuyu the head of the man who had laid the trap.)

(Manda, who could have unsummoned himself but is still there. Manda, who hasn’t even attempted to free himself. Manda, who could have easily freed himself if he had truly wanted to. Manda, who is looking straight at her.)

* * *

“Am I going to have to teach you the same lesson, or are you going to cooperate?”

“How is the brat?” He asks, evading her question. “I recognised his chakra.”

Tsunade raises an eyebrow, not quite surprised. So Manda  _ had  _ seen what Orochimaru hadn’t been able to. “Well. Didn’t expect  _ you  _ to notice that when useless over there couldn’t.”

Orochimaru’s head  _ twitches, _ but earth wraps itself around his mouth in a makeshift gag before he can interrupt. Tsunade wants  _ answers _ , and right now Manda is more likely to give them to her than Orochimaru.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when he’s left  _ alone _ and there’s no one to stop him from making stupid decisions,” Manda snarls the accusation at her face, bitter and angry, and she winces despite herself.

Because it’s true. Orochimaru had never done well when left on his own, and yet they had both left, hadn’t they? First Jiraya with his orphans and then his spy network, then her after Dan’s death, and Orochimaru had been  _ alone. _ Sakumo had tried, she thinks, but when he’d died… well. There had been no one left to take care of Orochimaru, no one to help him parse through those complicated things called  _ emotions _ , no one to humanise him in the eyes of Konoha’s judgemental civilians. Log knows Sarutobi-sensei wouldn’t have helped, not when he had an entire village to deal with, not when he had always been  _ shit _ at emotionally helping his students, not when Sarutobi-sensei had  _ never _ known how to deal with Orochimaru when he closed himself off from the world. Not when Sarutobi-sensei had  _ always _ been blind to the more despicable side of human nature.

(And this accusation… that’s proof, proof that despite  _ everything _ , Manda still  _ cares _ about Orochimaru, still cares about his summoner, and that… that gives her  _ hope. _ Hope that whatever it is that happened, it’s something that can still be  _ fixed. _ )

<strike> (She wants her best friend  _ back. _ Not just for Nawaki, but also for  _ herself _ as well. ) </strike>

“Between the experiments he did on himself and the other things that happened, his chakra has been  _ seriously _ fucked up.”  _ Other things, _ Tsunade notes, and this, this is confirmation of what she has suspected ever since she first sensed that  _ corruption _ inside Orochimaru’s chakra. In his earthen prison, Orochimaru is trying to shake off his gag, but cannot. “If he’s not using a jutsu to augment it, his chakra sense is shot to hell too. He’s been relying on scent and taste and vibrations to track for the past decade or so, and those  _ aren’t _ reliable anymore in this case, are they? How is the brat, Senju-hime?”

“What a moron,” She scoffs, before softening slightly. Manda still  _ cares _ , about Orochimaru and Nawaki both, and that’s… that’s something, at least. “As well as can be, given the circumstances, which means fucking heartbroken.  _ Sacrifices _ , Manda?”

“I might not have been able to do anything about the root of the problem, but Sage damn me if I couldn’t make it inconvenient as fuck for him to summon me,” The summon replies bluntly, never one to mince words.

“You should have found a better way.” She states, just as bluntly, because Manda could have, should have.

“And how would you know that,  _ Hime? _ ” Manda hisses. “After all, it’s not like you were  _ there _ to help, either of you!” He turns his glare to Jiraya, still standing by her side, oddly silent. “You left him behind, alone in a village full of ungrateful idiots who fear those who are too different, too strong, too smart, and full of conniving old bastards who looked at him and saw only a tool to use how they saw fit! Where were you when he needed you? Where were you when you could have made a difference? Where were you when a better way could still have been found?”

Running. She had been running away, away from her grief and her pain, away from this village who had taken her grandfather and grand-uncle, her parents, her baby brother and the one man she had loved.

Conniving old bastards, and that rings a bell too, doesn't it, something Mito-baachan had mentioned the last time they had met, shortly before her death, how Sarutobi-sensei's council was taking a more active role, how Danzo in particular was settling himself in the Hokage's shadow and how Sensei had never been able to corral him completely, had never actually _tried_ because for all that she loves the man, Sarutobi-sensei has a blind spot when it comes to those closest to him and has never found it in himself to deal with them as he should have.

(After all, Orochimaru is still alive.)

“I wasn’t there then,” she says quietly. “And that’s on me. But I am here now, Manda, and I want answers.  _ What the fuck happened while I was gone?” _

* * *

The giant snake pointedly glances down his trapped lower half, then at the equally trapped Gamabunta.

She crosses her arms. “If I release the two of you,” she asks. “Will you  _ both _ behave while we try to untangle this situation?”

Manda hisses. “If you are going to  _ finally _ help my idiot summoner, then I have no reason to fight any longer. But do not presume to order me around, Senju-hime. You have no authority over me.”

Next to him, Gamabunta rumbles. “I understand that there are things at play here that I am not aware of, but an explanation would be welcome, Senju-hime. I will hold my blade for now, if Manda keeps his word.”

“Tsunade,” Jiraya  _ finally _ shakes himself out of his funk. “What the  _ hell _ is going on? What do you mean, help the bastard?”

“His chakra is  _ tainted _ ,” Nawaki states from behind them, and the only reason Tsunade doesn’t startle in surprise is because she hasn’t once stopped keeping a metaphorical eye one him, her chakra still twined with his. She had felt every step he had taken towards them, Shizune trailing helplessly behind him. Katsuyu has reformed as well, and is slowly coming to join them, though two smaller versions of herself are riding on Nawaki and Shizune’s shoulders.

Nawaki’s chakra is locked tightly within himself again, but she’s too attuned to him for that to block her out. 

Her brother is a  _ mess. _ Pain and grief and anger and fear and confusion swirling around each other, anxiety ramped up high, but all that is being pushed back by determination and  _ hope _ .

Hope that there is something they can do, hope that somewhere, deep down, their Orochimaru still exist.

(Log, let it be true. Tsunade doesn’t think her brother could take it otherwise.)

“It’s… it’s  _ wrong _ and  _ twisted _ and it’s  _ not _ something he did to himself, the signature is too different,” Nawaki continues, voice hesitant and wavering. “It’s someone else’s… I… I think there’s a seal. Somewhere on his body. And it’s been there for a long time - ten, fifteen years, at least.”

The barely repressed hitch in his voice has her turning around and crouching in front of him in seconds.

“You don’t have to do this,” she whispers, a hand going up to rest on his shoulder. “I can handle it.”

“I know,” Nawaki whispers back. “I know but… I  _ need _ to do this.”

She squeezes his shoulder gently, offering what comfort she can and centering herself at the same time.

Nawaki takes a deep breath. “You should let them out,” he says, voice steadier for all that he’s trembling under her hand. “Manda’s not going to do anything, and as long as he doesn’t, I don’t think Gamabunta will either.”

Manda’s not going to do anything, because Manda recognised him, Nawaki doesn’t say. Manda recognises him, and Tsunade might not have any power over the giant snake but Nawaki does, even if he hadn’t yet signed the snake contract when he died the first time around. But he was being  _ considered,  _ and Manda had  _ liked him, _ had called him  _ snakeling _ and  _ hatchling _ and had watched over him and grieved for his death, had helped Orochimaru avenge him, had given Katsuyu the head of Nawaki’s killer but had kept the rest of his bones for himself.

“Are you  _ sure? _ ”

Sure he wants to do this, sure he wants to risk revealing his identity, sure he wants to confront the man who just tried to kill him?

“I’m sure,” Nawaki confirms and then, because her brother knows her too well. “What do you need?”

* * *

Tsunade breathes.

What does she need? She needs a moment to  _ scream,  _ to break down and rage at the world. She needs to hug him and never let him go. She needs to protect him and she needs answers and…

“Privacy seals,” she says. “My deflections ones are still intact and will hold, but I need something stronger if we’re doing this here and now - and we have to, because we’re not getting Manda indoors and I’m not moving Orochimaru until we’ve figured this mess out. I need Kabuto’s chakra sealed to the last drop, and for him to be sealed into an artificial coma afterwards until we know if he’s salvageable or not. If he isn’t, I’ll dispose of him  _ myself.” _

Because the fucker had tried to kill her brother, and there's nothing wrong with _his_ chakra as far as she's been able to tell, and she'll take great pleasure in killing him once she's extracted everything she needs to know from him.

Nawaki nods, already focusing on the seals he will need to create. “Grey Lizard combined with Blue Armadillo and the White Owl on the boundary lines?”

“You would know better than me, you know those kind of seals have never really been my forte.” 

She had learned them, of course, and Mito-baachan had taught her a lot more than she had been able to teach Nawaki, who had died so fucking _young,_ and Tsunade will have to teach him what she remembers, give him the scrolls that Mito-baachan left her, because Nawaki had always been so much better at fuinjutsu than her, had taken to it like a fish to water, and Tsunade wants to watch her brother _thrive._

“Says the one who used a fuinjutsu-anchored genjutsu to hide this entire battle from all senses,” Nawaki scoffs with a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. “Will you teach me that?”

“If you behave,” she teases back, grateful for the small levity. “Can you take care of the privacy seals?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

With great reluctance, she stands up, releasing his shoulder as she turns towards her teammates and their summons.

“Jiraya. I know you have a thousand questions, and I swear on the blood that courses through my veins that I will answer them. But right now, I need you to secure Kabuto and make sure he will not be able to escape in any way, or to listen in on our conversation. Can you do that?”

Her white haired teammate stares at her for a  _ long _ moment, then sighs. 

“Alright, Hime. But it better be one hell of an explanation.”

Despite his words, when he passes by her on his way to Kabuto, his hand briefly touches hers.

_ I trust you, _ it says.  _ I may not understand what’s going on right now but I still trust you, despite the years and the secrets between us. _

Fuck, but she missed him. So fucking him much. Him and Orochimaru both, and they're both here now but everything is _wrong_ and she's going to damn well _fix it._

Tsunade breathes. “Shizune. Help him, please. Make sure there won’t be any bad surprises when we unseal the bastard later.”

“Shishou…” Her apprentice is looking between her and Nawaki, brows furrowed as if trying to make sense of the situation. 

“I will explain as soon as we’ve dealt with Orochimaru, I promise,” Tsunade repeats softly, and Shizune nods before following Jiraya.

Nawaki is already hard at work, mixing inks and preparing his brushes, blank tags spread around him on the ground. She knows from experience that it will only take him a handful of minutes at the most, so she leaves him to it, though she keeps her chakra twined with his.

It’s soothing, for both of them, and while she has to let him out of her sight, she is not about to let him out of her range. Not after nearly losing him again two times in a row.

So she keeps her chakra twined with his even as she turns around to face the summons again, ignoring her still earth-encased teammate for the moment. A twist of her foot in the earth, and the snake and toad bosses are free again.

* * *

“Gamabunta. My gratitude for your help earlier and my apologies for ending your fight the way I did. Should you prefer to return to Mount Myōboku, I will ensure that Jiraya sends both the appropriate amount of high-quality sake and an explanation of what happened as payment for your time.”

The toad summon chuckles wryly. 

“Still the diplomat when you want to be, hm, Senju-hime?” He teases. “I will remain, for now at least.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you fix him,” Manda glares, not that she had expected anything else from him.

“And I’m still waiting for you to answer my questions so I can bloody well fix him, so calm the fuck down or I’ll tie you in a knot,” she snaps back. “And I swear to the Sage Manda, if you hurt him again…”

“I shall remain as well, my Lady,” Katsuyu speaks up before an argument starts. “Because I recognised the boy’s chakra as well, and would very much like to know what happened. And there is something I would like to talk to you about once this has been resolved.”

Log, what else is she going to have to deal with today?

Well, whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait, Tsunade decides as she steps towards Orochimaru, hands glowing a soft green as she prepares an in-depth diagnostic jutsu. Looking for the seal itself will have to wait a bit longer, but if she can isolate where exactly the corruption is strongest, it will give her somewhere to start.

Katsuyu herself has said that it could wait until after the matter with Orochimaru has been dealt with, and that’s exactly what Tsunade is going to do. 

She has enough on her plate right now anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope it was worth the wait! As usual, feel free to let me know what you thought of it or to yell at me for making you cry and giving you feels!
> 
> And feel free to join [my Discord](https://discord.gg/xreVUA2) ! It's mostly for my One Piece fics, but there's also a channel for this one ;)
> 
> Ps: The quote Mito is using is a translation from a Victor Hugo quote: On ne souffre jamais que du mal que nous font ceux que l'on aime. Le mal qui vient d'un enemi ne compte pas.  
The other quote, about how hate is too strong an emotion to waste on someone you don't love, is paraphrased from Sixto Rodriguez


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a seal on Orochimaru, a seal that someone else placed on him, and it’s wrong and dark and twisted, and Manda is saying that there’s something wrong with him, and Nawaki… Nawaki wants to hope, to hope that this means that this isn’t really Oro-sensei, that Oro-sensei might still be there, buried underneath this seal. Wants to believe that there’s a chance that he’ll get his sensei back on top of his sister, and maybe he’s being greedy, maybe he’s being selfish, but he wants.
> 
> He lost everything twice over, first by dying and then by coming back too late. Let him have this. Please please please let him have this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everybody! I hope you're all doing as well as can be in these trying times, and that my stories can offer at least a tiny bit of distraction from... everything that's happening in the world at the moment.
> 
> On my side of things, things are looking up: I've been back home for about three weeks now, and being back with my family has helped a LOT with the mental health side of stuff. I've also been getting a LOT of hugs in the past three weeks, which is awesome, and have been able to visit some friends in France this weekend and finally meet their baby in real life and not just through pictures or videos (and he's even cuter in person!). And as is somewhat usual with me, the long train rides to get to their place and then back home ended up being VERY productive despite me currently running on around twelve hours of sleep for the past five days xD So appologies in advance if there's any typos or grammar mistakes, I'm not currently in my most awake state xD
> 
> As for this chapter, what can you expect? FEELS, of course, and lots of it. The Senju/Uzumaki siblings wanting to commit murder. Jiraya being confused but trying his best, and also ready to join them in the murder planning. Manda FINALLY giving us the answers we were waiting for. More FEELS, alongs with a shit ton of ANGST. Horrible realisations. A cliffhanger you're all going to want to kill me for.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS for: non graphic description of experimentations on children and prisoners of war; mention of the murder of a teenager; control seals, canon typical level of mindfuckery and some that goes beyond that
> 
> Basically, you might want to stock up on tissues and maybe also to have a punching bag close to hand. Just in case.
> 
> Enjoy this chapter!

Nawaki had been wrong, Tsunade thinks distantly, horrified. There isn’t  _ one _ seal on Orochimaru’s body. There’s  _ five _ , one on his tongue, one on his heart, and three on his arms.

The ones on his arms are the least worrying - one is Manda’s summoning tattoo, clearly done conjointly by Summon and Summoner themselves a long time ago. It’s soul-anchored, and given what Nawaki had told her of Orochimaru’s body-jumping, it followed him from body to body without problems.

It’s also the only seal that was made by Orochimaru himself, and that alone makes Tsunade want to kill someone.

The other two seals on his arms, one on each, have Sarutobi-sensei’s chakra in them. His and an otherworldly presence that, from Nawaki’s information, is the Shinigami himself. But it’s faint, much fainter than she’d feared, and… it’s body-anchored. It doesn’t touch Orochimaru’s soul, and Tsunade is so very very relieved that she could  _ cry. _ The Shinigami’s chakra is present, yes, but it’s faint, similar to how it always sort of hovered around Tobirama-oji after he started experimenting with the Edo Tensei. Observing more than taking, and Tsunade has no doubt that this  _ wasn’t _ Sarutobi-sensei’s intention when he reached for the Shinigami’s power.

Sensei had been trying to send Orochimaru’s soul straight to the Shinigami, without giving him a chance to reach the Pure Lands, and Tsunade will  _ never _ forgive him for this.

(Sarutobi-sensei is and always has been a  _ coward, _ too weak to stand up to his precious people, too reluctant to dirty his hands with their blood. She would have forgiven him for killing Orochimaru himself, no matter how much his death would have hurt her, because Orochimaru had been a danger to the village and her people and needed to be stopped. But this? No. Tsunade will not forgive this, not ever.

She will heal him, yes, but she will also ensure that he is never again in a position of command or leadership. He will not be her advisor either, will not be part of her council of elders - and neither will she keep the current elders by her side. Not with what she has gathered from Nawaki’s tales, not with what she remembers from Mito-baa-chan’s complaints.

She is Tsunade of the Senju and she is the Godaime Hokage, and she will not let  _ anyone _ dictate her actions.)

The seals on Orochimaru’s arms are meant to paralyze, to stop him from using them. The Shinigami’s touch is more targeted. Tsunade isn’t quite sure, but from what she can identify, she wouldn’t be surprised if Orochimaru had lost the ability to use Edo Tensei completely. At least in this body, and isn’t that interesting? That the Shinigami hadn’t anchored this particular seal into Orochimaru’s soul? It implies that Orochimaru might be able to use that one day, if he ever manages to switch to another body.

And given the other two seals… well. Tsunade isn’t surprised that Orochimaru had been desperate enough to switch bodies in an attempt to get rid of them. Not that it had worked, because whoever had made these seals had been  _ smart _ and anchored them to both his soul  _ and _ his chakra, and no wonder Manda had said that his chakra had been seriously fucked up, those  _ travesties _ had been inked right on top of two of his most important chakra nodes.

The one on his tongue is a secrecy seal, one that has some  _ very _ worrying failsafes. As in, deadly ones, as well as one that is worryingly similar to the Hyuuga’s cursed seal. Specifically, the torture part of it. Tsunade wouldn’t even know where to start dismantling it, but she thinks that Jiraya could do it, especially with Nawaki’s help. Her brother can complain of his lack of proper knowledge all he wants - his ability with seals has always been more instinctive than hers, and once he has a chance to read through the books and notes that their grandmother left behind, he’s going to be unstoppable.

But even more than the one on his tongue, it’s the seal on his heart that has her  _ seething. _ Because that? That’s more than just forcing secrecy on someone, or torturing them to death to prevent them from revealing secret information. It’s dark and twisted and  _ wrong, _ and she recognises elements of  _ obedience-compulsion _ but also what appear to be what Tsunade can best describe as  _ personality corrupters. _ Emotional dampeners. Seal-induced indifference, an attempt to turn Orochimaru into an cold and logical  _ puppet, _ one that still had full control of his genius intellect and shinobi abilities, but one devoid of anything that made him a  _ person,  _ obedient and subservient,and Tsunade is going to  _ rip whoever did this to him to pieces. _

The only reason the seal didn’t take fully is  _ Manda, _ she realises. Manda and the rest of the snake summons. Because the summoning contract had been inked into Orochimaru’s very soul, and it had protected him somewhat, had made him realises that there was something  _ wrong _ and pushed him to fight against the corruption attacking his very being. Pushed him to  _ run, _ to leave Konoha, and that said something, didn’t it? That meant that whoever did this to him is from Konoha, and the chakra within those seals is vaguely familiar, not enough that she can identify it immediately but enough that she will be able to recognise it from now on. If it had only been chakra, her limited sensor abilities wouldn’t have been much help, but combined with seals? She may not be the best, and she may be more Senju than Uzumaki, but seals  _ always _ keep a trace of their writers within them, and  _ that _ she can recognise, even if not to the level of her brother.

And once she finds the bastard? She’s going to  _ end him. _ Slowly and painfully.

Because despite everything, despite the years that have gone by and the horrible things that Orochimaru has done (things he has done that were not entirely of his own volition, things that he has done because someone  _ twisted him,  _ tried to alter his very  _ soul,  _ things he would  _ never _ have done otherwise), despite the fact that he just tried to  _ kill her baby brother, _ Orochimaru is  _ hers _ and always has been. He’s  _ team _ and he’s  _ family-of-choice _ and he’s  _ hers. _

She takes a moment to breathe, to push back the  _ fury _ that is boiling in her veins. To reign her chakra back in before the ground can shatter beneath her feet in response to her anger Now is not the time to unleash it, not until she has all the information she needs.

Not when she’s not sure how to destroy this seal, not when she’s not sure if they’ll be able to do so without confronting the sealmaster first.

She allows a trickle of chakra to flow into the earth holding Orochimaru, letting it cover the seals again, and she turns to where her brother is approaching, a handful of sealing tags in his hands.

He’s carefully not looking at Orochimaru as he hands them to her, and it breaks her heart even more.

“They just need to be primed,” Nawaki tells her. “They should work alongside your deflection seals, so even if someone makes it past those, they won’t be able to hear anything. Lipreading will also be impossible.”

She squeezes his hands gently as she takes the seals from him and give them a quick once-over. She’s not as good at them as her brother is, but it had been habit, between the two of them, to check each other’s seals if they had the chance, just in case.

“Looks good to me,” she says, handing them back. “Set them up around us - Jiraya seems to be nearly done with the insult to medic nins.”

* * *

Nawaki nods, but doesn’t answer, throat tight as he takes the tags and walks off to arrange them in the correct array.

He’s trying very hard not to think about what just happened, but it’s… hard.

Oro-sen… no,  _ Orochimaru _ just tried to  _ kill him. _ Actually, properly kill him. His sword had been aiming straight for his heart, and an injury like that? Nawaki isn’t sure even the combination of Uzumaki vitality and Kyuubi’s healing abilities would be able to bring him back from something like that.

He nearly died.  _ Again. _ At the hand of his  _ sensei, _ in front of his  _ sister, _ and Tsunade-nee had saved him, had taken the blow meant for him straight-on, and Nawaki  _ aches, _ hates that she got hurt for  _ him, _ but at the same time, knowing that he has someone who is willing to protect him, who is willing to put his life above their own?

It’s… it’s been a  _ very _ long time since Nawaki has had someone like that. Genma-san would do it too, he thinks, maybe, but the man hasn’t been able to be a very active presence in his life, not as more than a worried mother-hen neighbour, both inside and outside the mask. He’s done his best, and it’s always been clear to Nawaki that the man wasn’t staying away of his own volition, but the fact was that Genma-san had missions and orders and that  _ someone _ had obviously ordered anyone who might have known his birth parents to stay away from him. Genma-san had been flouting the rules as it was, what with having moved in next door within two weeks of Nawaki getting kicked out of the orphanage and put in his own little apartment, and then stopping by regularly, making sure he had food and running water and helping him out from time to time. More recently, Genma-san had even gone so far as to hand him his birth parents fuinjutsu notes and implicitly revealing their identities to him, despite the Sandaime’s gag order.

But having someone who isn’t afraid to show that they care, who would hug him and tell him they love him and protect him and be there for him no matter what?

Nawaki hasn’t had that since he died the first time around, and he  _ missed this. _

And that’s why, despite his guilt at his sister’s injury, Nawaki can’t help he flutter of _joy_, can’t help but feel _glad_ that he didn’t have to rescue himself this time.

* * *

He carefully wraps the last seal around the handle of a kunai, then plants it in the ground after double-checking the distance to the other ones. A flick of his chakra, no more than a tiny spark, and the privacy bubble shimmers into existence for a second before turning invisible.

“Impressive,” Jiraya says from behind him, and Nawaki doesn’t startle. “Especially considering that you came up with it on the spot. And yet you keep telling me you only know the basics of fuinjutsu? Hate to break it to you, kid, but neither this nor the seal you used on the Suna brat are anything remotely close to  _ basic. _ ”

It is for _me,_ Nawaki thinks. It is when you know just what my clan was capable of, when you know just what my grandmother and grand uncle could come up with on the fly in the heat of battle.

He shrugs. “Compared to what even an Academy-level Uzumaki could do? Yes, it  _ is _ that basic, Ero-sennin.”

“And yet, given that you have had no formal fuinjutsu training nor access to the Uzumaki ressources since they disappeared with Uzushio, it’s definitely more than slightly impressive, kid. Take some pride in your achievement - this was a damn good job.”

Nawaki shrugs again, then forces himself to turn back towards where the others are gathering.

“We should go and join them,” he says, even though that’s definitely not something he’s looking forward to.

But… There’s a seal on Orochimaru, a seal that someone else placed on him, and it’s  _ wrong _ and  _ dark _ and  _ twisted, _ and Manda is saying that there’s something  _ wrong _ with him, and Nawaki… Nawaki wants to  _ hope, _ to hope that this means that this isn’t  _ really _ Oro-sensei, that Oro-sensei might still be  _ there,  _ buried underneath this seal. Wants to believe that there’s a chance that he’ll get his sensei back on top of his sister, and maybe he’s being greedy, maybe he’s being selfish, but he  _ wants. _

He lost  _ everything _ twice over, first by dying and then by coming back too late. Let him have this. Please please please let him have this.

“You sure you’re okay, kid?” Jiraya asks, and he’s genuinely worried for all that he’s clearly awkward and confused about everything that happened in the past hour or so. “Did Shizune check you over? Four-eyes over there didn’t exactly hold back on you…”

“She did,” he confirms, and wills his own feet to move forwards, Jiraya falling in steps next to him. “Between the Kyuubi and me being an Uzumaki, there wasn’t anything left to worry about by the time she did.”

Except shock, because he had nearly died again,  _ twice _ in a handful of minutes, the second time at the hands of his  _ sensei, _ but he’s fine. Or he will be, at least, once they figure out what the fuck is wrong with Oro-sensei, once he has a chance to talk to Manda.

(Once he breaks down in his sister arms. Once she holds him tightly and wraps him in her chakra and makes everything better because she’s Tsunade-nee and that’s what she  _ does. _ )

* * *

They trudge back to the others, and Manda immediately zeroes in on him, the scales around his eyes tightening briefly.

_ Relief, _ Nawaki recognises, and  _ shame, _ too, hidden behind it.

He wants to run up to the snake and demand answers, ask him about the  _ human sacrifices _ and what the hell happened to his sensei, wants to run up to him and bury his face in the purple scales, wants to have Manda hiss soothing nonsense at him and tell him stories about the summon worlds and the newest hatchlings’ antics, but he doesn’t. Instead he spares the giant snake a small nod before slipping into position slightly behind his sister.

Tsunade-nee is the one taking the lead here, the ranking officer because she is the  _ Hokage _ even if she hasn’t been crowned yet _ , _ but also the one who had taken charge as soon as she had noticed what he had, noticed that there was something  _ wrong _ with Oro-sensei, the one who had taken command and had been obeyed without question. She’s the known factor to all the players - Nawaki knows the others, but it’s been  _ years _ and none of them save his sister know  _ him. _

Jiraya gives him one last worried look, than goes to stand on Tsunade’s right, Shizune at her left and Katsuyu at their backs. Manda is curled up in front of them, next to the still earth-encapsulated Orochimaru, while Gamabunta has moved slightly to sit closer to Jiraya.

Even before Tsunade-nee opens her mouth, Nawaki already knows that whatever she is about to say will not make any of them happy. His sister’s chakra is  _ bristling,  _ locked down tight within herself, not a hint of it allowed to flow into the ground beneath her feet. The only exception is the tendril of chakra still wrapped around him, but the fact that his sister cut herself off from the earth is… telling.

“There are five seals on Orochimaru,” Tsunade-nee starts, eyes locked on Manda, and Nawaki startles. Five? He had only sensed o- no, he had only sensed one  _ before _ the panic overcame him. There should have been at least two others, Manda’s summoning one and the one Hokage-jiji had put on his arms during the invasion, but  _ five? _

“One is of his own design, created jointly with you, Manda,” his sister goes on, lips tight and voice carefully neutral. “In order to allow him to summon you without hand seals. It’s soul-anchored and followed him despite his newfound habit of jumping bodies. Two seals on his arms are of Sarutobi-sensei’s design, though tweaked by the Shinigami himself when Sensei called on his powers in a glaring moment of stupidity.”

Shinigami? Hokage-jiji had called upon the  _ Shinigami _ when fighting against Orochimaru? Nawaki had known he had called upon the deity to fight the Edo Tensei versions of his grandfather and grand uncle, but… to use it  _ directly _ against Oro-sensei… Nawaki staggers, barely managing to steady himself even as his sister wraps her chakra tighter around him. That… That could have  _ destroyed _ Oro-sensei’s soul! Oro-sensei wouldn’t have gone to the Pure Lands, would never have had a chance to be reincarnated, to see his precious people again, and that’s… that’s  _ horrible _ and  _ wrong _ and Nawaki wants to punch Hokage-jiji in the  _ face. _

Luckily, Tsunade-nee goes on before he can work himself into a full blown panic attack.

“These particular seal are body-anchored and completely prevent the use of his arms. The Shinigami tweaked them in a way that I believe prevents him from using Edo Tensei again while in this body.”

Relief slams through Nawaki’s vein. That’s… that’s a lot better than he’d expected upon hearing that the Shinigami had been involved in the sealing. He’s probably  _ still _ going to have a panic attack about it, but he can at least push that back to deal with later.

“The last two, however, are  _ far _ more worrying, and I  _ need _ Manda to tell me what the  _ fuck _ happened and who I need to gut for it,” Tsunade-nee  _ snarls, _ and that, more than anything, tells Nawaki just how dire the situation is.

“Hime?” Jiraya asks, wary even as he glances between her and Orochimaru. “What kind of seals and where?”

“A secrecy seal, one that causes intense pain and even death if triggered, soul-anchored on his tongue,” and Nawaki has to shudder at that, because soul-anchored seals are  _ personal,  _ so deeply inked into your very being, and they should  _ never _ be placed on you by someone else, never ever ever, and Tsunade-nee’s chakra is  _ boiling _ and what can be worse than that and - “and a fucking  _ travesty _ of a soul-anchored seal designed to  _ twist _ his very being into an independent but obedient puppet for the sealmaster to command, twisting his emotions and thoughts, right on his heart, and the only reason it didn’t fully take is because of the Snakes’ prior claim!”

* * *

Nawaki…

Nawaki barely has the time to turn to the side before he’s puking his guts out, bile burning through his throat as he heaves.

That’s… that’s  _ vile _ and  _ horrible _ and  _ monstrous _ and  _ evil _ and sealing should never ever be used like that and Kami, Oro-sensei, Oro-sensei was put through  _ that, _ and Nawaki doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if he can get rid of that seal or if Jiraya can but he needs to get rid of it, needs to get rid of it  _ now _ except he  _ can’t _ because he doesn’t have all the information and he wants to  _ slaughter _ whoever did this to Oro-sensei and…

“Breathe,” Tsunade-nee orders, voice gentle nonetheless as she kneels by side and rubs his back soothingly. A bottle of water appears in front of him in Shizune’s hand, and he takes it mechanically, taking a sip and rinsing his mouth when his sister tells him to.

“Who?” he croaks out, straightening and looking up at Manda, because he  _ needs _ to know. “Manda,  _ who?” _

“ _ Shimura Danzo,” _ Manda snarls at the same time as Jiraya, whose fists have clenched tightly even as killing intent  _ flares _ from the Toad Sage.

“Sensei’s old teammate?” Tsunade-nee asks, her own chakra swirling in fury around her just as Nawaki breathes out “Creepy-Danzo?”

Jiraya startles at that, but nods sharply. “I figured it out as soon as you mentioned a seal on his tongue,” he explains, face dark. “Sensei… sensei gave the warmongering bastard too much leeway. Let him build his own little shadow ANBU: ROOT, a private army entirely under his authority, children raised as emotionless soldiers from infancy, willing to do ‘Konoha’s dirty work’ as he puts it. Minato ordered it disbanded when he became Hokage, but Danzo just hid it better, and Sensei let him get away with it when he took the hat back, even when the fucker twisted Hatake Kakashi into trying to kill him. That was about ten years ago. Thankfully the brat snapped out of it, but Sensei never so much as gave Danzo a slap on the wrist for it. It did give me the opportunity to investigate it further, though, as the Hatake brat managed to get one of the ROOT members to defect back to the general forces. He had a seal on his tongue, similar to the one you just described. I managed to disable the torture and death part of it, but couldn’t completely get rid of the secrecy part, not within the short time I was allowed to study it.”

He hesitates, looks back towards the still encased in dirt Orochimaru.

“The boy’s name is Tenzo, and he’s the only survivor of the Mokuton experiments, Hime.”

* * *

That… that is something that Nawaki is going to put away and think about  _ later, _ because there’s only so much he can deal with at once and he’s fast reaching his limits. From the look of it, so is Tsunade-nee, because she takes a deep breath and nods sharply even as her grip on his shoulder tightens.

“So Danzo turned into a power-obsessed war-monger and built his own private army, with Sensei’s implicit permission, despite Danzo having actively tried to have him  _ assassinated? _ Has Sensei gone completely  _ senile _ in the years I was away?”

Nawaki is wondering the same thing, because  _ what the fuck? _ How could the  _ Hokage _ let this happen? Especially when the Yondaime had clearly tried to put a stop to it?

“I’ve tried to reason with him and all it got me was an extended mission out of the village to investigate Orochimaru’s doings,” Jiraya confirms grimly.

“Manda,” Nawaki asks, because this is too much, too much, and he needs answers about Oro-sensei  _ now, _ the rest can wait, but he needs to  _ know _ so he can start trying to take this  _ travesty _ of a seal apart and make its sealmaster regret ever having picked up a brush. ”Manda,  _ what happened?” _

That has everyone going deadly silent as all eyes turn towards him, and Tsunade-nee’s hand tightens on his shoulder, her chakra wrapping him in a warm embrace, steadying him and taking the last of his nausea away.

* * *

“Twenty years ago,” Manda hisses, green eyes locked on Nawaki. “Shimura approached him, with the Hokage’s full backing, to start more experiments in order to give Konoha an edge in the ongoing war. He had been told to focus on bloodlines in particular, both in trying to reverse engineer known ones and in trying to create new ones. At first they were prisoners of war, spies that had been caught and interrogated until there was nothing more to gain from them, and the Hokage had given the orders, so he obeyed. But then the prisoners got younger and younger until they were barely more than  _ children, _ and when he questioned that, questioned where they were coming from and refused to continue his experiments… Natsu  _ died.” _

Nawaki’s breath hitches and he staggers slightly, leaning against Tsunade-nee to steady himself. No. No, please, _ no. _

He had known Natsu had died, of course he had, but… had Natsu been...

“His illness had been bad, but nowhere near deadly yet,” Manda continues, coiling and uncoiling agitatedly. “He had stopped by the house the day before, and he didn’t smell like he was dying, and his most recent blood tests gave him at least five more years. We were working on a cure-” the snake’s breath hitches. “He was the last of our hatchlings, Orochimaru was doing  _ everything _ he could think of to try and keep him alive for as long as possible. And then he was  _ dead _ and he shouldn’t have been, we still had  _ time, _ and then he was  _ dead _ and something wasn’t right. We knew it wasn’t a natural death, no matter what the autopsy said, so we confronted Shimura.”

Natsu. Natsu had died and he shouldn’t have, or at least shouldn’t have died  _ then, _ which means that someone  _ killed him, _ killed him because Oro-sensei refused to experiment on  _ children, _ and Nawaki feels like he’s going to be sick again.

“We confronted him, but we were grieving and furious and  _ angry, _ because Natsu was  _ ours, _ was one of our hatchlings, the last one we had left, and Shimura had  _ sharingan eyes, _ one in his head and three in his arm, and every time we thought we’d killed him he would come  _ back  _ and he  _ toyed with us _ and we  _ lost. _ Orochimaru forcefully unsummoned me, but one of our smaller snakes managed to stay with him. She couldn’t do anything but watch, but she’s the only reason I know exactly what happened. He was taken deep underground, into a hidden base underneath the village, and they put those seals on him before he even regained consciousness, and we felt it, all of us, every single snake in the summons realm, and we fought back, because he’s  _ our _ summoner, our nestsibling and that seal was trying to take him from us!” Manda rears his head back and  _ roars _ , the noise odd and discordant coming from a snake. “We tried to reverse summon him to us, but nothing worked. It took all we had to stabilize the contract and try and keep his soul safe, but we couldn’t stop it, not completely. And by the time we could have afforded to stop and ask for help, he summoned me, and the Elders, except that he wasn’t  _ himself _ anymore, he was  _ wrong wrong wrong _ and he wouldn’t  _ listen _ but he was still  _ ours  _ so we couldn’t leave, couldn’t break the contract because that would mean losing him  _ completely _ and letting that  _ asshole _ have him so we  _ stayed _ and he placed a  _ geas _ preventing us from telling anyone not part of the nest what had happened!”

* * *

A  _ geas, _ Nawaki staggers back in shock, and feels more than see the others do the same, Katsuyu and Gamabunta included, the latter looking  _ horrified _ at the thought of someone trying to forcefully subvert one of his bonded like that. A chakra-and-seal enforced promise, one only enforceable by the main summoner. None of the snakes would have been able to warn  _ anyone _ about what had been done to their summoner, not even other summons.

Anyone not part of the nest, and  _ oh,  _ that’s a  _ very _ specific wording, isn’t it, and that means that Oro-sensei had  _ still _ been hiding somewhere behind that horror of a seal.

Because the nest means the snake summons, of course, but not only. It also includes the  _ summoners _ and those both summons and summoner consider  _ theirs. _

Jiraya and Tsunade-nee aren’t part of the snakes’ nest - they are Oro-sensei’s, always have been, but they are also the toads’ and the slugs’, and snakes don’t like sharing with other summons, even if they tolerated some better than others.

Mitarashi Anko… Mitarashi Anko never had a  _ chance _ to be part of the nest, not really, despite being one of the snakes’ summoners herself. Because if Nawaki did the math right, she had become Oro-sensei’s student  _ after _ Shimura put the seal on him, and that means that Oro-sensei wouldn’t have been able to truly consider her part of the nest, not with that travesty messing with his soul.

But Nawaki? Nawaki and Nanao-chan and Natsu, they  _ had _ been part of the nest. Had been called  _ hatchlings  _ and  _ snakelings _ by their sensei and his summons both, and…

Oro-sensei had never stopped hoping, Nawaki realises faintly. Oro-sensei had believed in reincarnation, had been clinging to the hope of seeing his parents again in their next lives, and he must have clung to the hope that he would see them again too, his first students, especially so soon after Natsu’s senseless death. And so, when Shimura had ordered him to make sure his snakes wouldn’t spread word of his treachery, Oro-sensei, hidden deep underneath the seal that was twisting him and turning him into someone he was not, had managed to give himself a loophole. A slight one, one that had so very little chance of coming true, because no one had ever remembered their previous life before, but a loophole nonetheless

Nawaki takes a deep breath.

* * *

“Then how are you telling us this, if you’re under a geas in the first place?” Jiraya asks, arms crossed as he stares the snake down suspiciously. Next to him, though, the way Tsunade-nee’s chakra is curling tightly around him means that she’s figured it out already.

“Because he hasn’t told  _ you _ anything,” Nawaki says quietly, stepping forward and letting his sister’s hand fall from his shoulder. “He told  _ me.” _

He finally raises his head, lets his chakra flow freely instead of locking it down within himself, and allows his eyes to meet the golden eyes in front of him.

“Hello, sensei.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackles as she hides under her desk*
> 
> Sorry not sorry for this cliffhanger :P It was waaaaayyyyyy too tempting for me not to use it xD And please remember that if you kill me I can't write the next chapter!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it nonetheless! As usual, feel free to let me know your thoughts/yell at me for the evil cliffhanger in the comments!
> 
> And feel free to join [my Discord](https://discord.gg/xreVUA2) ! It's mostly for my One Piece fics, but there's also a channel for this one ;)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nawaki had wanted to sign that contract from the very moment Oro-sensei had introduced his summons to them. Had been elated when Oro-sensei had announced that he would be allowed to do so as soon as he made chunin. Had kept hoping, even in this second life, that he might one day have that opportunity.
> 
> He had just never thought that it would be like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everybody! It's been a while, but I hope you're all doing as well as can be in these trying times, and that this update can offer you at least some distraction.
> 
> I'm doing... better. Still got some ups and downs, obviously, and definitely some lingering effects from those months in lockdown, but I'm... okay. And working on the parts that are not okay so that they'll be okay too at some point. It's a work in progress.
> 
> As for this chapter, what can you expect? FEELS, of course, and lots of it. Some indepth fuinjutsu analysis. Jiraya being confused but competent. Manda FINALLY getting the hugs he deserves. More FEELS, alongs with a shit ton of ANGST. Some more horrible realisations. Probably not the reunion you expected. An ending that could possibly be seen as yet another cliffhanger that you may hate me for.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS for: mention of the murder of a teenager; control seals, canon typical level of mindfuckery and some that goes beyond that
> 
> Basically, this is another Bring Your Own Tissues and Punching Bag kind of chapter, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway!
> 
> Have fun!

Disbelief hope grief anger recognition horror guilt guilt hope hope hope-

Inked bands constricting around the emotions, dampening them, locking them down, but not fast enough, not quick enough to suppress the slightest widening of eyes, the quietest thought of  _ Nawaki nestling snakeling student alive alive alive alive- _

Darkness covering his thoughts, burying them under  _ frustration anger annoyance need to get away- _

But underneath it, like burning embers ready to spark at the slightest hint of wind, Orochimaru is  _ FiGtHiNg. _

<strike> _ Nawaki alive alive alive need to see need to talk- _ </strike>

* * *

The thing about control seals is this - they don’t actually  _ erase _ the person underneath. They twist them, twist their thoughts and their actions, but the core? The core remains, and the more the orders diverge from the core personality, the more they resist, the more damage they inflict to both the seal and themselves, and the more focus the sealer has to give the seal to keep them under their control.

Orochimaru has been sealed for over twenty years.

There is no way he will remain unscathed.

* * *

Nawaki ignores the gasps from behind him, ignores Shizune’s shock, ignores Jiraya’s loud disbelief, ignores Tsunade-nee’s hushed whispers.

All his attention is on the man in front of him, whose eyes have widened just a fraction, the only reaction visible through the layers of mud keeping him trapped and gagged.

(The only reaction that makes it through the  _ travesty _ that has been done to him-)

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Nawaki says, voice soft even as he allows his chakra to flow around his sensei, to take a better look at the two soul-anchored seals Shimura had  _ dared _ to impose on him.

_ I’m sorry I died, _ he doesn’t say.  _ I’m sorry I was too confident, I’m sorry I rushed ahead and got myself killed. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when Nanao-chan died, when Sakumo-san killed himself, when Natsu was  _ ** _murdered_ ** _ . I’m sorry <strike>I’m sorry I’m sorry-</strike> _

There’s no other reaction from Oro-sensei, at least none that’s visible or audible, what with the mud-gag Tsunade-nee had put on him, but Nawaki didn’t expect one in the first place.

Not with the seals impending his emotions, his very  _ soul. _

Sensei has been fighting these seals for  _ twenty years, _ with only his summons’ help. Had lost everything and everyone he cared for even before that, and of those who were left  _ no one noticed. _ Not his fellow Konoha-nin, not Hokage-jiji. Tsunade-nee had been long gone, and so had Ero-Sennin, busy with his spy network, and there had been no one to see the change, to try and help his sensei, and Nawaki is  _ furious. _ Furious because Oro-sensei had done  _ nothing _ to deserve such treatment, had  _ always _ been loyal to Konoha and her people, had sacrificed  _ so much _ for the village, and to get treated like this in return? To be  _ muzzled _ like a rabid dog, to have his free will stolen from him, to be turned into a will-less  _ puppet? _

Deep within Nawaki, from where it’s still bubbling close to the surface after his close brush with death earlier, the Kyuubi’s chakra spikes once, twice, thrice, reacting to his anger, and Nawaki forces himself to stop.

He’s furious, but he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and focuses on his chakra, on the seals he can feel more clearly now, despite the earth and clothes hiding them from his sight.

He can break down later (and he  _ will) _ . Right now, he has a job to do.

* * *

The seal on Oro-sensei’s tongue is the easiest to sense, deadly precise and… semi-neutralised? 

Nawaki frowns, digs his chakra slightly deeper for a better feel (and if he hopes that the direct contact between his chakra and Oro-sensei’s sealed one might help, might spark  _ something _ , well, that’s for him to know and others to never find out). It’s hard to check without actually  _ seeing _ the seal, and Tsunade-nee isn’t letting the gag go until they’re sure Oro-sensei won’t try to hurt them with that weird tongue and sword attack again, but the reading he’s getting from his chakra hints that at least part of the seal has been contained, somewhat - the ability to cause pain from a distance, if Nawaki were to hazard a guess. The secret-keeping part is definitely still there, though, but the threat of torture and death should he attempt to reveal those secrets is gone. 

Now he just  _ can’t _ mention it instead of being punished for even trying to. Which means that Oro-sensei has been trying to get rid of it, and partly succeeded. Good, that will give Nawaki and Jiraya somewhere to start, and if Oro-sensei himself is already fighting it, well, it’s certainly going to make it easier for them to remove a fucking  _ soul-anchored seal. _

They’ll definitely have to start there, Nawaki thinks, before they can even attempt to unravel the second seal. Not only will it give them more insight into Shimura’s sealing style, but it also means that Oro-sensei will be able to tell them more about the seal. Whether he actually  _ will _ is another matter entirely, one that will depend on how much of a grip the second seal has on him, but at least he will be physically capable of it.

The second seal… Nawaki brushes his chakra against Tsunade-nee’s earth, and opens his eyes again in time to see it recede from Oro-sensei’s chest, leaving the area around his heart visible, seal dark and for all to see, pulsing with Shimura’s chakra despite Oro-sensei’s own chakra being tightly bound.

A glance is enough to make him want to puke again, but Nawaki steels himself as he takes a step closer, shifting slightly to allow Jiraya to bend down next to him, both of them focusing on the lines and symbols in front of them.

(Doesn’t miss the way Jiraya’s chakra copies what Nawaki’s had done moments earlier, seeping into Oro-sensei to better analyse the seals, to try and reach whatever is left of Oro-sensei underneath them.)

(Jiraya might not be Nawaki’s favourite person in the world, but he is one of the Dentetsu no Sannin, had been Oro-sensei’s genin teammate and friend and family long before Nawaki was his student. If there’s anyone out here who has as much interest as Nawaki in getting rid of those fucking seals, it’s Jiraya.)

(And Tsunade-nee, of course, but that’s a given and always has been.)

Nawaki steadfastly ignores the sharp look Jiraya throws his way, one that promises a long talk later, eyes tracing the lines of ink on Oro-sensei’s pale skin instead.

_ Yellow rat wrapped around both red tiger and white rabbit - emotional dampener. _

_ Inverted green serpent next to an inverted blue horse - limited freedom and empathy. _

_ Brown beaver tilted 90 degrees and brown dog - twisted loyalty, compulsion to work and obey. _

On and on it goes, one twisted seal after the other, turning  _ Oro-sensei _ into  _ Orochimaru, _ and Nawaki has never hated anything more than he hates this seal, hated anyone more than he hates the man who put it on his sensei.

He breathes in, deeply, and lets it out slowly, looking over the seal one more time.

Something rustles to his left, a hard backed notebook and a pencil, pressed into his hand by his sister, and all Nawaki can manage is a quick nod as he grabs them, pencil running over the pages immediately.

This seal is  _ terrible, _ it’s a travesty and an insult to sealing, to seal-masters everywhere, and it’s  _ devious. _ If Tsunade-nee hadn’t cut off Oro-sensei’s chakra from the rest of his body completely, it likely wouldn’t have been visible  _ at all, _ not with the black fox and white owl surrounding the entire thing and hiding it, using Oro-sensei’s own chakra to do so. No wonder Nawaki hadn’t truly been able to sense it until now - though that particular seal is… damaged. 

Not much, admittedly, nowhere near the level of damage of the tongue seal, but the fox symbol is lacking two strokes and another is half-erased. The owl is similarly affected - likely due to Oro-sensei’s effort to loosen it. The brown dog from the compulsion part is the most damaged part of the main seal, which is probably the only reason why Oro-sensei had been able to leave Konoha in the first place, though what’s left of it is significant enough that Shimura would still be able to impose some influence if he was standing in front of him and put enough chakra into the seal. 

The inverted green serpent is still intact, but faded. Definitely a result of the snake summons fighting its influence on their summoner, which had probably restored at least part of Oro-sensei’s independent thinking - enough for him to realise that something was very wrong and to leave, at the very least. 

Using any reptilian symbol for this particular seal had been a mistake - summons are  _ definitely _ an unknown variable when it comes to sealing, and Oro-sensei has always been closer to his summons than most people. With  _ every single serpentine summon _ fighting the seal from their realm, the fact that it had taken at all is a testament to Shimura’s strength - and an indication that he might not have been working alone. Nawaki jots down a note about that, then goes back to analysing the seal.

So. Fox, owl, dog and serpent are either damaged or faded, which is a good sign. The seal won’t be able to hide again, and Oro-sensei has been fighting against the loyalty compulsion and the boundaries enforced on his free will.

But the rest…

Every single emotional and empathic dampener and modifier is still intact, stark black against Oro-sensei’s pale skin. The only emotion left alone is anger, and when it’s the only one allowed to express itself… Well. No wonder Oro-sensei’s been a mess and tried to attack Konoha as a whole rather than focus on Danzo in particular. 

Not that Nawaki doesn’t understand the urge, because, really, he  _ does, _ but that plan had been  _ stupid, _ clearly influenced by anger rather than rational thought. The Oro-sensei Nawaki had known would never have been so sloppy. In fact, Nawaki can think of at least five different ways his sensei could have invaded Konoha and actually  _ succeeded, _ and none of them are anywhere as flashy as the one that actually happened. Which just goes to show that actually invading had never been the point of this endeavour, in hindsight.

Honestly, given the state of the village and how much things have degraded compared to when Nawaki was alive the first time around? If Oro-sensei hadn't been simultaneously influenced and hindered by those fucking seals, and had actually  _ wanted _ to take over Konoha? No one would have realised until well after the fact and that would only have happened if someone decided to doubt the cover story.

* * *

_ ("Sandaime-sama's health was declining and so he sent for his most loyal student the one who has been undercover for years to spy on our allies and make sure they wouldn't turn on us - and see what Suna had planned? Without Orochimaru of the Sannin, we would never have known until it was too late. Of course those stories of experiments on children were a cover to allow him to leave the village in a believable way. Those were enemies of the village under disguise seals. Who better than the Sandaime's brightest student to take the hat now that age is catching up on him?") _

…

Nawaki should probably be worried that he can actually come up with those kinds of plans off the top of his head, but in his defense? He comes by it honestly and by that he means that both his grandmother, great-cousin  _ and _ sensei had all been  _ very _ good at the more covert and subtle ninja arts and had basically taught him how to turn public opinion in his favour from the cradle. Had he wanted to invest the time and effort, he would probably have been able to change the civilians' mind about him, but honestly Nawaki has been a mess™ since he realised he had been reincarnated and hadn't been in any state to spare that much energy when there had been days he struggled to even make it out of bed.

The plans to take over the village, though? Those are  _ definitely _ Tobirama-oji's fault. Back when Nawaki had been a toddler the first time around, his great-uncle had gotten into the habit of taking him to the office and around the village and asking him how he would damage this or that place, or how he would break into the Hokage's tower. Nawaki had  _ loved _ that game as a child; Tobirama-oji had  _ loved _ the fact that Nawaki had inadvertently pointed out some potentially  _ very _ damaging security holes, and had regularly treated him to ramen afterwards.

Nawaki shakes himself from the memories and focuses back onto the seal once more.

* * *

Seals that influence emotions are tricky, especially ones designed for long term use, and Oro-sensei has been suffering under these for the past twenty years. The others, the ones designed to impede his thought process and limit his freedom, Nawaki has a decent idea on how to deal with. But those emotional components?

Nawaki doesn’t even know where to begin with dismantling them, has no clue what the consequences will be once they're neutralised. 

Because there will be long-lasting damage from those seals. Repressing emotions like that for so long, as well as exacerbating others, is neither healthy nor sustainable long-term.

Oro-sensei is going to need  _ so much therapy _ if this works, Nawaki thinks bleakly as he looks down at his notes. And he’s not going to trust  _ anyone _ enough to go through with it. Though maybe the snake elders… he jots down a reminder to talk to them about it, and another to mention it to Tsunade-nee. He’s pretty sure she already has an idea of what kind of consequences they’ll be looking at, but better safe than sorry.

He has filled fifteen pages of the notebook Tsunade-nee has given him already, and he can hear Jiraya scratching his own notes to his right, and for the first time in both of his lives Nawaki is  _ glad _ for the perverted Sage’s presence.

Nawaki is good at seals, but he lacks  _ training. _ Lacks  _ experience, _ too, because he died before Mito-baachan could teach him more, and she died before he came back, and his Uzumaki mother died on the very day his second life began.

He’s never had a formal teacher, has been teaching himself with instincts and Mito-baachan’s notes and his birth-parents notebooks, but it’s slow-going, trial and error even with his Uzumaki blood talking loudly in his ears.

Jiraya, however? Jiraya is a seal  _ master, _ one that had been taught by Mito-baachan before her death and had visited Uzushio for more lessons before its fall. He may not be Nawaki’s favourite person, but he’s  _ good. _ And he has some experience with Shimura’s sealing style already, from what he mentioned earlier, which will help.

(And he, too, cares for Oro-sensei. He, too, wants to help him, wants to free him.)

Between his instincts, Jiraya’s experience and Tsunade-nee’s medical knowledge… Nawaki breathes in, then out, slowly and carefully. They might just be able to do this.

He takes one last look at the seal, then looks down at his notes. Next to him, Jiraya closes his own notebook, face grim and brows furrowed.

“Well?” Tsunade-nee demands from behind them. “What’s the verdict?”

Her voice is calm but Nawaki can hear the uncertainty behind it, the worry.

He looks at Jiraya, then starts when the older man simply nods in his direction. 

“We’ll need to do the one on his tongue first,” Nawaki says. “Jiraya-san,” because the man doesn’t deserve the mocking moniker Nawaki had bestowed upon him, not when he’s helping Oro-sensei, and the way the man startles at the respectful address would have been funny in any other circumstances, “probably has some idea on how to get it off already, so it will be the easiest. It’s already half-eroded anyway, from where Oro-sensei tried to unseal himself, and hopefully getting rid of it will allow him to tell us more about the second one. It’ll definitely give us more insight into Shimura’s sealing style.”  
  
“The one on his heart…” Jiraya trails off. “Well. You’ve seen it yourself, Hime. It’s… complicated. And deeply entrenched. We’ll need the snake elders’ help for that one, I think, but… we can get it off. The teme’s been fighting it, too, though not as successfully as the other one, and the emotional dampeners are going to be the hardest to get rid of, but it’s doable."

He hesitates, then turns to Manda. When he addresses the summon, his tone is much more respectful than it had been earlier.

"Manda," Jiraya says, tone more polite than Nawaki has ever heard him use despite not using any honorific. "Do you know what happened to Orochimaru's original body?"

Nawaki's breath hitches. He had known, of course, that Oro-sensei had resorted to body jumping and he understands why, those seals- 

But he hadn't  _ understood, _ hadn't thought about what that implied. Does… does that mean that Oro-sensei's body is  _ dead? _

Manga eyes the Sannin warily.

"He put it under stasis seal and gave it into our care," the giant snake hisses carefully before Nawaki can work himself up into another panic attack. "Why?"

Jiraya rubs a tired hand against his face.

"Because switching bodies  _ has _ weakened the seals somewhat despite them being soul-anchored and because his soul will be more comfortable in the body it's meant to inhabit, especially once we get rid of those seals. I don't want to add dysphoria to the trauma this is already going to cause. If we do this right, we can transfer his soul back into his actual body and get rid of the unwanted seals at the same time."

This. This is why Jiraya is a seal  _ master _ and a Safe and one of the Sannin. Nawaki hadn't even  _ thought _ about that! And he should have, log damn it he should have! It had taken him so fucking long to get used to the reflection in the mirror, to accept this body as  _ his,  _ he should have realised-

Manda seems surprised too, but he's quick to recover.

"If you  _ swear _ that it will help our summoner, I will bring it to you once everything is ready," the snake reluctantly agrees.

"On my vows to Mount Myoboku, I do so swear," Jiraya promises, eyes never looking away from Manda's piercing gaze. "It’ll be a pain in the ass, we will definitely require the help of the snake elders and any notes you may have access to regarding his body transfer technique, he'll be a wreck afterwards and so will we, and there’s a chance that it might alert Danzo that something is happening to it, but we can get it off.”

“Not here, though,” Nawaki points out, much as he would like to just get rid of the damn thing already. “Too open. Too close to Konoha if Shimura decides to send someone after us. We need somewhere  _ safe.” _

Tsunade-nee’s lips tighten.

“And Konoha won’t be until we’ve taken care of that bastard.”

"No," Jiraya agrees grimly. "It won't."

Tsunade-nee pauses, thinks. "How long do we have until they expect you to bring me back or take the hat in my stead?"

"We left the village nearly two weeks ago… I told them I'd heard rumours of your presence in this area but that they might have gone cold by the time I got there. Utatane and Mitokado are holding down the fort and Nara Shikaku, the Jounin commander, is handling the day to day stuff. They're focused on rebuilding for now, but they need a new Kage, fast, or there's a risk of another village getting  _ ideas. _ Two more weeks, at most, and they'll probably start sending hawks or summons for updates by next week."

"And how long would you need to deal with the seals and the soul transfer?"

Jiraya shares a glance with Nawaki, who shrugs. This will be the Sennin's show, not his. Jiraya is definitely the one with the most experience on the matter.

"Three to five days at least, a week at most, if we're safe and undisturbed."

She hesitates, then sighs. “Alright. I know somewhere where we can go, and it's close enough that we can easily make it there and back in time.”

Nawaki steals a glance at her, trying to figure out what she means, but she just gives him a tight smile before continuing.

“Jiraya, I need you to seal these two into prisoner scrolls, I’m not taking any risks. Separate ones, too. Make sure you seal Orochimaru’s chakra down tight as well, even if my paralysis should hold long enough. Shizune, go back to the inn, pack our bags and pay the bill. We meet on the eastern road in thirty minutes.”

“Shishou…” her apprentice protests, still staring at Nawaki in confusion and disbelief.

Tsunade-nee gives her a soft smile. “We’ll explain everything once we’re out of Tanzaku-gai, Shizune, I promise.”

Shizune frowns, but nods. “I’ll hold you to that, Shishou.”

* * *

As she hurries back towards the village, Tonton in tow, Tsunade-nee turns back towards Manda.

“Manda. How can we contact you and your elders once we reach a safe place? Would it be acceptable for Katsuyu to send you a message?”

“No.”

Then, before Tsunade-nee can protest, Manda lowers his head until it is level with Nawaki’s face, his tongue flicking out to taste the air.

_ He’s familiarising himself with my new scent, _ Nawaki realises before deciding that, fuck it, he’s waited long enough already, and throwing himself at the summon.

His arms can’t even reach all the way around the narrowest part of Manda’s snout, but Nawaki doesn’t give a damn as he presses his face against the purple scales, hiding his tears against them. He hears Jiraya’s startled shout further behind him, from where the man is busy sealing Kabuto away, but ignores it, focusing instead on the way Manda is gently rubbing his snout against him.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” the litany bursts out of him along with the tears. “Manda, I’m sorry-”

“Ssssilly hatchling,” Manda croons, flicking his tongue to gently hit his face. He hisses his 's's in a way he hadn't earlier, falling back into the more informal speech patterns he used to use back when they were running amok in Oro-sensei's labs. “It wassssn’t your fault. None of it was.”

“But-”

“It wassssn’t. And once he is freed of thossssse damned sssseals, my idiot ssssummoner will tell you so himssself.”

Nawaki sniffles, rubbing his tears away with his forearm.

“You really think we can do it?” He whispers, quiet enough that only Manda should be able to hear.

“I know you can,” Manda says, switching back to what Nawaki privately refers to as his 'public' way of speaking, then coils himself back slightly. “After all, you are one of  _ mine, _ and I only accept the best as my summoners.”

Nawaki blinks. “Wha-”

There’s a puff of smoke next to Manda, and suddenly there’s another snake there, much smaller and wrapped around a huge scroll. One that Nawaki immediately recognises, for all that Oro-sensei had only shown it to them once, at the very beginning of their team.

“Manda, what…” Nawaki’s brain stalls on the words. "You said I couldn't until I made chunin!"

“The only reason we didn’t let you sign it last time was that you didn’t have the chakra reserves for it yet. Now you have them and more, and I refuse to allow any opportunistic summon-” Manda glares over Nawaki’s head in the direction of Gamabunta, not bothering at all with subtlety “-to believe that they can lay a claim on you when you’ve been  _ ours _ for so long.”

Nawaki had wanted to sign that contract from the very moment Oro-sensei had introduced his summons to them. Had been elated when Oro-sensei had announced that he would be allowed to do so as soon as he made chunin. Had kept hoping, even in this second life, that he might one day have that opportunity.

He had just never thought that it would be like this.

Every single time he had imagined signing the contract, it had always been with his team right next to him, with Nanao-chan and Natsu cheering him on, with Oro-sensei gently coaxing him through the hand signs even though Nawaki had long since memorized them. Later, once he had realised that his teammates had long since died, he had reluctantly accepted that this part of his dream wouldn’t come through, but he had always,  _ always  _ believed that Oro-sensei would be there for this. An active participant, gazing proudly at Nawaki as he writes his name down on the contract, not this shade of his sensei encased into earth, sealed into near unrecognition by a twisted bastard.

He swallows.

“Manda…”

The giant serpent lowers his head, rubs it gently along Nawaki’s side.

“I know, hatchling. But he can’t do it the way we all wanted to do it, not now, and he won’t unless you manage to unseal him. And you won’t be able to do that unless you’re one of us, officially. The elders will be able to help you once you’re a proper summoner, but right now, no matter how much we both wish it were otherwise? We can’t.”

It's obvious that admitting this displeases Manda greatly, and Nawaki understands why.

Being helpless is  _ terrible.  _ Knowing that there's something you  _ could  _ do but not being able to do that is even worse.

"D'you think sensei will still treat me to ramen afterwards?" He whispers quietly, ignoring the tears rolling down his cheek as he leans his head against Manda's.

"He promised, didn't he?" Manda says matter of factly, as if it's that easy and…

Maybe it is, or maybe it  _ can be, _ at least.

Nawaki takes a deep breath, and steals a look at his sister.

Tsunade-nee  _ smiles _ at him, a soft, sad smile that's encouraging nonetheless. She knows just how much this means to him, just how long he's wanted to sign this contract.

Knows exactly how much getting it like this  _ hurts, _ too, but her smile is gentle and soft and Nawaki still can't believe that she's actually _ here,  _ that she recognised him immediately and that she still loves him and still looks at him and sees  _ Nawaki _ despite the blond hair and the blue eyes and the whisker marks. Still can't believe he gets to have her back, and now he gets to have Manda back too, and soon he'll have Oro-sensei back too and…

Twelve years alone save for Genma-san mother-henning him and Iruka-sensei and the Ichiraku being a distant but friendly enough presence (well, for the last few months at least in Iruka-sensei's case).

Years of thinking he would never have any of his precious people back, and now, suddenly, he gets to have three of them? 

He never thought he could have this, and he doesn't quite know how to handle it.

Manda gives him a gentle but forceful nudge, forcing Nawaki to turn towards the snake who had joined them.

* * *

A breath, then another, again and again until Nawaki finally feels steady enough to walk the few steps that separate him from the iridescent serpent wrapped around the massive scroll.

"Ikuchi-sama," Nawaki bows low, voice quiet but steady, to the contract-keeper. "You honour me by your presence."

Ikuchi-sama slowly, carefully, uncoils herself from the contract she holds.

"It is my pleasure to be in your presence again, hatchling," she hisses, voice surprisingly deep. "Your death was grieved by all who belong to our nest. There will be much rejoicing tonight."

"I shall endeavour to be worthy of your regard," he replies, but Ikuchi-sama shakes her head.

"You have always been, hatchling. After all, our summoner chose you as one of his and as such you became one of ours. We may have given Katsuyu-sama the head of the man who killed you, but we feasted on his flesh and kept his bones in revenge for your death."

She pauses, flicking her tail to open the scroll, letting it unroll next to her.

"We once said that you would sign this contract when you were strong enough to do so, then believed you lost to us before you could do so. Shinigami-sama has seen fit to give you back to us, and this time we will not wait. Step forward, hatchling, and claim us as we claim you, for you are of our nest and always will be. Call us, and we will come. Your enemies will be ours, and your victories will be our victories."

"Step forward, hatchling, and become our summoner, so that aid will always be granted to you and you can help others in return."

With a shaky inhale, Nawaki drops to one knee next to the open scroll, taking a moment to admire the sealing script covering it. Oro-sensei's signature is easy to find, his beautiful kanjis neatly spelling out his name next to his palm print. 

By all rights, Mitarashi's signature should be in the spot right next to Oro-sensei's, but…

There's a blank space. Just wide enough for another name and hand print, right where Oro-sensei had once pointed out to him and told him that this is where Nawaki's name would be one day.

It takes Nawaki three tries to cut his right palm just deep enough to bleed, but not enough to damage anything, and his hand is still trembling when he dips the fingers of his left hand in the blood.

He hesitates slightly, fingers poised over the scroll.

_ What name- _

Naruto may have been the name he was given in this life but it has never been  _ his. _

Nawaki is his name, in this life and in the last, and his name it will remain, but…

With slow, careful strokes, Nawaki traces the symbols of his name onto the paper, the blood standing out starkly on the white paper and black seals. Once he's done, he presses his hand down next to it, leaving a perfect handprint once he lifts his fingers away.

Next to him, Ikuchi-sama nods regaly, then darts her upper body forwards to wrap gently around his neck, rubbing her head against his cheek.

"Congratulations, Uzumaki-Senju Nawaki. You are now officially a Snake summoner," she hisses proudly next to his ear, and seconds later Manda’s snout is rubbing against his side as well.

“ _ Ours,”  _ the giant summon hisses. “You’re  _ ours _ and we will never lose you again!”

Nawaki buries his face in Manda’s scales and  _ sobs. _

* * *

It takes him a good five minutes to calm down enough to let go of  _ his _ summon - because he’s a  _ summoner _ now, and he still can’t quite believe it - and wipe his tears away with the back of his hand. His poor jacket is now considerably damper than it had been, but Nawaki ignores it.

“What now?” He asks, not quite sure who he’s directing the question towards.

Ikuchi-sama retreats to the contract, rolls it up again with a deft movement of her tail and wraps herself around it again.

“Now I return to the nest,” she says, rainbow scales glittering. “And will announce your return. There shall be much rejoicing tonight.”

Nawaki bows. “I will not be able to meet the nest immediately,” he replies softly. “I cannot afford to travel to your realm until we’ve fixed the seals on Oro-sensei. May I ask you to carry my apologies and well-wishes to the rest of the nest?”

“I shall do so,” Ikuchi-sama preens. “And I’ll arrange personal summons for you as well. Be ready to summon them tonight.”

“Wha-” Nawaki starts, but the contract-keeper is already unsummoning herself. “Personal summons?” he asks Manda instead, who’s still keeping his head against Nawaki’s side.

“If you think you are ever going  _ anywhere _ without at least one snake on you, hatchling, you are delusional,” Manda says flatly. “I told you - you’re  _ ours _ now, and we’re not letting you go.”

Nawaki’s expression must be a picture, because he can hear Tsunade-nee repress a snort to the side.

“But-”

“Not. Going. Anywhere. Without. At.  _ Least. _ One. Snake. With. You,” Manda hisses sharply. “Two would be even better, one to unsummon themself and alert us if anything happens and another to help protect you.”

“That’s not-”

“Nawaki,” Tsunade-nee interrupts him, tone gentle but firm. “You  _ died. _ And now you have an S-rank nukenin organisation coming after you because they want the bijuus. If Manda hadn’t suggested the personal snakes, I wouldn’t let you leave my sight without one of Katsuyu’s fractions with you,  _ ever. _ ”

Nawaki wants to protest, really, he does, but… There’s something in his sister’s eyes, something soft and broken and full of grief, and he refuses to cause her more anguish.

To cause  _ them _ more anguish, because Manda is just as affected, for all that it’s less visible on a snake’s face than a human’s.

“Alright,” he says instead of the retort that had originally been on his tongue.

He gives Manda one last hug, wrapping his arms around the snake’s head as far as they can go, and promises to summon him as soon as they’re in a safe place. He demonstrates that he knows the hand signs five times before Manda is finally satisfied, and has to promise to summon whichever personal summons Ikuchi-sama has arranged for once they stop for the night, before the giant summon finally unsummons himself after one last warning glare in Tsunade-nee’s direction.

Nawaki is reaching for her before the smoke even disperses, presses his face against her stomach as she tightens her arms around him and lets him hide his tears in her shirt.

He knows he'll see Manda soon. He knows he can just summon him himself now, whenever he wants and that Manda wouldn't begrudge him for it, but...

They need to get moving, to get somewhere safe so they can help Oro-sensei. He can summon Manda again then and be as clingy as he wants.

But in the meantime, the giant snake's absence _hurts._

* * *

By the time she lets him go, Gamabunta has unsummoned himself and so has Katsuyu, save for a small fraction making her way to Tsunade-nee, and Jiraya is crouching over a massive scroll next to Oro-sensei, brush flying over the paper too fast for Nawaki to follow.

It only takes the Toad Sage one minute to finish the prisoner scroll, and less than a handful of seconds to seal Oro-sensei into it.

Nawaki’s fingers clench at his side as his sensei disappears from view. He  _ knows _ that Oro-sensei is just in stasis inside the scroll, and prisoner scrolls are nearly indestructible, but… it feels like he’s losing him again.

Jiraya seals the prisoner scroll within a much smaller sealing scroll, then ambles towards them, scroll in hand.

“They’re both sealed nice and tightly,” he tells Tsunade-nee. “No chance of either of them escaping.”

Jiraya goes to slip the scroll into one of the pockets of his belt, then stops. He holds it out to Nawaki instead.

“Here, kid. I think it might be best if you keep an eye on the teme for now.”

Nawaki gapes at the Toad Sage, but his trembling fingers are moving without his consent, grabbing the scroll and pressing it close to his body.

“Are you sure?” He asks, uncertain even though his fingers are gripping the scroll so tight they’re probably going to leave a mark and he’s not sure what he would do if Jiraya actually asks for the scroll back.

Jiraya extends a hand and gently ruffles his hair.

“Yeah, kiddo. I’m sure,” he says softly, and it takes all Nawaki has not to cry again.

So he just nods instead of trying to say anything, slips the scroll inside an inner pocket of his jacket.

“Ready to go?” Tsunade-nee asks them both.

“Yeah,” Jiraya says while Nawaki just nods, officially done with words for the time being. “So, where to, Hime?”

Tsunade-nee turns towards the east.

“Uzushio,” she says as she starts walking. “We’re going to Uzushio.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does this count as a cliffhanger, I wonder?
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it nonetheless! As usual, feel free to let me know your thoughts/yell at me for the evil cliffhanger in the comments!
> 
> And feel free to join [my Discord](https://discord.gg/xreVUA2) ! It's mostly for my One Piece fics, but there's also a channel for this one - and I sometimes post snippets of the chapter I'm currently working on ;)

**Author's Note:**

> So? What did you think? Hope you enjoyed it :)


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